


Taken for Fools

by Cuckoo_On_A_String



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings (Movies), The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Action/Adventure, Adventures in growing up, Be Wary - We're Sweary, Domestic Fluff, Drama, Family/Friends, Female Friendship, Fluff, For a Friend, Gift Fic, Homemaking, I Love My Shrubby, Inappropriate Humor, Mental Health Issues, Millennials in Middle-Earth, Multi, Not Beta Read: We Die Like Tooks, Not a 10th Walker, Pagan Character, Petting moss, Sudden serious moments, We're Not Taking Ourselves Too Seriously, Whump, potential romance?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-09
Updated: 2020-04-21
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:07:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 20,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22626829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cuckoo_On_A_String/pseuds/Cuckoo_On_A_String
Summary: Some things do not belong in Middle-Earth, things like blue hair, lighters, and women who bear them. Adventure calls, but practical things like eating, breathing, and not falling to a panic attack take precedence. Follow two foul-mouthed friends on a quest to find purpose, travel home, and survive long enough to get even with Elrond's sons."And seriously, f*ck you. That was not a dinosaur."Updates once a week on Sundays. I hope you all will have fun on the ride, but so long as the birthday girl I'm writing this for likes it, I'll die happy.
Comments: 13
Kudos: 62





	1. Fuck You - Not a Dinosaur

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Shrubby](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Shrubby).



Fuck You - Not a Dinosaur

* * *

Butter-yellow sunshine speckled the lip of the gorge, but the trail winding beside the stream, deep in the ravine’s green belly, kept in the cliffside’s shadow. Elyse savored the chill as she followed Marilynn beyond the paved track onto the dirt path. It was a perfect day, early in May during the week, before the tourists descended and the kids escaped school for the summer. Quiet muffled the outside world, silencing everything except the creek’s burble and an irate blue jay shouting somewhere nearby. 

Elyse saw the joke coming before Marilynn even opened her mouth.

“Your family’s calling,” Marilynn teased.

“Oh, fuck off.” 

She shook out her hair, refusing to feel self-conscious. The home dye job had gone especially well this time, she thought, and the layered shades of deep blue gleamed with a fresh shimmer. It made her feel more herself than she had in a long time. That was something. That was good. Another small step on the endless road to recovery.

“You know you love it.”

“I do,” Marilynn sing-songed.

They flattened themselves against one of the sandstone boulders littering the gorge to make room for a pair of hikers marching the opposite direction. Elyse greeted the strangers with a smile and a nod, and by the time they’d passed, Marilynn was gone. She wasn’t surprised, but her friend’s speed impressed her.

“Shrubby?”

She climbed a series of roots woven around a small boulder like steps and peered down the path. No sign of Marilynn. She looked up just in time to see red gold hair appear over the moss crowning a boulder.

“You aren’t supposed to climb the rocks,” she chided out of habit, a knee-jerk reaction spurred by second-hand guilt for breaking the rules, but Marilynn sat on her high perch with a shit-eating grin.

“It’s fine, El.”

It was fine. It was. They wouldn’t get in trouble. But still.

Elyse adjusted her backpack. It was more purse than backpack, and it wasn’t designed for hiking at all, but this was more stroll than hike, and they’d be back to the car within an hour. Unfortunately, the poor design meant the straps kept wandering down her arms, trying to escape into the wild as they walked. Too bad she had no intention of giving her purse its freedom.

Shrubby, bagless and free, slid down the back of the boulder with a rasp of rubber traction on sandstone. She popped back onto the trail, smacking dirt and lichen from her jeans. She looked entirely at home, and El wished – not for the first time – that she could steal some of her friend’s natural confidence. Marilynn – or Shrubby – really had no fucks to give about a staggering number of things, many of those things being rules. While Elyse giddily subverted social expectations and delighted in uncomfortable questions, she never had the wellspring of Don’t-Give-A-Fuck-I’m-Awesome Marilynn oozed. Marilynn wasn’t invulnerable, but she just seemed to so comfortable in her own skin. El wished she fit her own half as well.

The blue hair helped.

“Want to hit Rock House after this?” she asked.

“Sure.” Marilynn practically bounced as she walked, springing between steps like a mountain goat, and Elyse took her time following, savoring the clean air and the wealth of green surrounding them. As different as their paces were, somehow they never got separated.

Conkle’s Hollow had a strange trail. The official path just sort of faded out as the gulch narrowed, and the girls hopped across the stream as the rushing voice of a small waterfall echoed between the rock walls. Trees grew out of improbable crags, and ferns ate up any available soil in the dim light. Hidden away from cars and roads and cell phone service, the hollow created another world, and Elyse felt like a child again exploring the woods behind her house with nothing but a friend and a stick.

Eventually, they reached the fall. It wasn’t big, and it wasn’t at all impressive, but the hollow it had carved from the stone was one of the most serene hideaways Elyse had ever found. It offered sanctuary. Even the demons in her own head left well enough alone here. Because the space had such a strange and special ambience, she struggled to explain why she loved it so much, but everyone she’d ever brought learned to love it the same. Particularly Marilynn, even if she did forget between visits.

The mountain goat scrambled to the top of a pile of big rocks just outside the fall’s spray. No one would guess she’d argued about coming to this particular park over breakfast. She sat on the crown of a boulder, happily petting the moss growing there, and Elyse laughed.

“Every year, you say ‘Let’s skip Conkle’s Hollow.’ And every year I make you come anyway. And _every year_ you get here and you’re glad we came.”

Marilynn shrugged. “Is true.”

Elyse confirmed the agreement with a nod, finally relaxing into the morning’s adventure.

“It is.”

She shrugged off her bag. A rock far away from the water made a perfect end table, and she left the bright canvas sack to enjoy a moment of freedom before she splashed across the shallow pool to join Marilynn. She couldn’t climb as high as Shrubby. Going up wasn’t a problem, but coming down always was. Her knees shook and her balance forgot to kick in. So she hoisted herself onto a low boulder with lots of moss and let her heels drum against the side. Carved names and dates graffitied the stone, some dating back nearly two hundred years. Elyse wondered what the hollow looked like in the 1800’s when those first renegades left their mark. Surely not much. Nature moved slowly, and every year she came with Marilynn, they enjoyed the same sights, the same sounds, the same smells…

She took a deep breath, expecting loam and the distinct clarity of moving water. Those notes were all there, but something overwhelmed them. Something out of place. Elyse frowned, sitting up straight to take a deeper breath as she looked for the source.

“Do you smell that?” Memories of grey water and pebbled shores rushed over her tongue. Salt and wind. Scents dredged up from a hidden world, full of rot and life and motion. “It smells like the sea.”

Marilynn looked up from her moss, sniffing the air. Her eyebrows inched together. “You’re right.” She clambered down from her perch, breathing deeply as she went on the hunt. Elyse went right along with her. They came to the edge of the pool, then waded in.

The waterfall at the end of Conkle’s Hollow was barely a fall at all in the dry season, but it fell over a shadowed recess worn into the sandstone over many years of flash floods, wind, and spray. The glittering water hid anything in those shadows very well, and it wasn’t until they’d inched around the deluge they even saw the gap in the rock.

Marilynn warbled something between a hum of confusion and surprised glee. “This wasn’t here before.” She was already slipping inside.

Elyse caught her sleeve before she disappeared into the gap. “If it’s a new fissure, it probably isn’t safe.”

Licking her lip, Marilynn looked up. “I don’t see any loose rocks.”

“You don’t have to see them for them to kill you.”

Marilynn flipped roles, grabbing Elyse by the arm and tugging her forward. “But it’s a new cave! And it can’t be deep, right? I mean, let’s just go in a little ways.”

Unconvinced, Elyse looked past her friend into the narrow path. To be fair, it really didn’t look new. The walls looked as smooth and time worn as any other recess Shrubby had coaxed her into exploring. Her eyes adjusted quickly, too, and the whole thing looked less ominous without the waterfall’s scintillating contrast.

But there was that smell. She wasn’t sure if it made her want to follow it to the source or run as far away as possible. It just didn’t belong here, and it sent her animal brain into danger mode.

She liked control. The gap offered something new and unpredictable. She didn’t know how deep it was, how safe, or where if it opened on the other side somewhere dangerous. She didn’t know what would happen if they went inside.

But if she didn’t go in, Marilynn would go without her, and if something happened to her alone in the crevice, Elyse might not be able to get her out.

And if there was anything that could shut up the animal brain, it was loyalty to Shrubby.

It was still an amazingly bad idea.

She spared a glance back at her purse, sitting pretty on the rock, right where she’d left it. Elyse bit her lip.

“Just a little ways.”

Marilynn tugged her forward, a grin splitting her face, and Elyse followed into the crag. Immediately, the smell intensified. The rock pressed in around them, and very little light reached through the fissure, not even enough to foster a healthy growth of moss. Only a few bits of lichen and mold stained the stone green. Elyse’s free hand wandered over the cool, damp surface, desperately trying to ground herself as the smell of the sea washed over her in waves. It was like she could hear it, and she would swear she could taste the salt.

The narrow cave went too deep. It didn’t make any kind of geographical sense, especially when a light appeared ahead of them. Elyse and Marilynn had walked the ridge trail around the Hollow before, and there shouldn’t be an opening at the end of this. But somehow there was, and the smell of the sea was starting to fade, so Elyse pressed on with her best friend, ready to see where this dangerous little escapade would spit them out.

But _fuck_ was she gonna give Shrubby hell later.

“I can see the end!” Marilynn shouted. She sprinted ahead, moving sideways through a narrow fissure, and Elyse squeezed after her, cursing under her breath.

As she wriggled to freedom, cursing her boobs, Marilynn called again. “El, get out here! You have to see this!”

She popped free and trotted at an angle to clear the final corner blocking her from the exit. After a few brief minutes in the dark, the sun blinded her, and she ducked away, shielding her eyes and looking down at the grass and pebbles under her feet as she edged towards Shrubby’s voice.

“El, _look_.”

She wore sunglasses so often for a reason. Daylight wasn’t kind on her gray eyes, especially after years of working third shift and living the night owl life. Eventually, though, she blinked the worst of the white spots out of her vision and looked up.

Sharp peaks of snow-capped mountains stabbed into the sky, towering over a landscape wilder than anything Ohio had seen in hundreds of years. A great river snaked along in a sea of green hills, tall grasses, and spotted woods. It inspired a weightless, pleasant insignificance she hadn’t felt since a visit to the Appalachian Mountains when she stared across a valley carved by a roaring waterfall large enough to drown out conversations half a mile away. But this was not Appalachia. No way. The vast panorama featured exactly no signs of human habitation, and the mountains ahead looked more like the Rockies than their green-swathed cousins near the East Coast.

Wherever they were, it sure as hell wasn’t Hocking Hills.

Elyse snapped around and plunged back into the stony gap. She made the first corner and froze.

“Marilynn!”

Her friend skidded to a halt just behind her, and Elyse didn’t need to see her face to know what she was feeling.

The gap had closed up behind them.

“What the fuck?” Shrubby hissed.

Elyse squeezed in as far as possible and pushed against the solid rock, looking for signs of a cave-in or collapse, but she found nothing to suggest the stone had shifted in the past hundred years. The cool face denied her answers, and Elyse couldn’t help feeling the whole space felt… smug. She shoved against the wall again, gave it a slap, called for help to see if an echo would betray space beyond the flat rock in her path.

Nothing.

It was like the passage had never been there. Elyse couldn’t take her hands from the stone, terrified of letting go and falling into… into wherever the hell they were.

Sure, the mountains looked like the Rockies a bit, but not enough to actually _be_ the Rockies. Any span of unspoiled wilderness that spectacular would be in a national park, and although she’d never visited the northern peaks, she and every other soul with an ache to wander and access to the internet already knew the best views. This was a hell of a view, and it looked nothing like any photo she’d ever seen. The terrain below the foothills looked wrong, too.

But something more than the sights pushed at her subconscious. Maybe the light felt a little too pure. The colors looked too vivid. Even the air smelled different.

“Maybe we got turned around?” Marilynn suggested.

Elyse tried to focus on her voice, but the vague fuzziness of a panic attack was setting in, and her attention belonged to the fucking cave that was no longer a cave. She swallowed.

“Where? How the hell would we get turned around when there were no fucking turns?”

“Maybe this is the wrong gap.” Marilynn sprinted out, and Elyse heard her crunching over loose shale and muttering to herself as she searched.

But Elyse knew this was the right hole. She hadn’t taken more than two or three steps past the opening, and although Marilynn may hold hope in her own ability to get suddenly and hopelessly lost, Elyse trusted her sense of direction. Their road disappeared, and they had no idea where it had dumped them.

As she clung to the stone, eyes tightly shut, she tried to come up with an answer. Maybe it was a dream. She usually recognized dreams, though – unless it was a depression dream, but this wasn’t one of those at all. It lacked the judgement and flavor of despair. An accident then. She followed Shrubby into the damn gap and a loose stone knocked her unconscious.

Or, this was real.

When she opened her eyes again, she scrutinized the faint green blossoms of lichen inches from her face. She looked at the faint sparkle of mica in the stone, grudgingly admitting to herself that this was not the soft sandstone of Hocking Hills.

She really, really wanted this to be a dream. Everything felt firm and true, though. The physics made sense, and she didn’t have the weird sensation that if she ran fast enough, at the correct angle, she could take flight. No dinosaurs, either.

She brushed her fingers over the trinity knot at her throat, instinctively seeking comfort from the charm, and jerked to attention.

It was _warm_.

It could be body heat. But even she didn’t run that hot, and considering the circumstances…

_Smug_. The stone felt _smug_. The sensation was fading, but it felt like her friends were standing at her back again, laughing at her rage upon finding her dorm room stuffed with vibrant pink Easter grass.

She pushed away from the wall, slipping back out into the sunshine, less panicked but more disturbed.

Shrubby was still combing the area, looking for other gaps that might magically open to Conkle’s Hollow. Elyse eyed the mountain range, gaze tracking along the high ridges. So strange, but also strangely familiar. Maybe she’d visited this place before. Somehow.

A place with no visible roads she came to find through a gap in the rock that smelled like the sea. Sure. That was a definite possibility.

At last, Shrubby gave up on her search. She wandered back to Elyse, arms folded, with her face set in the deepest frown Elyse had ever seen.

“I can’t find it.”

Elyse hummed back, not quite ready to admit the full truth of their situation. “Well, the light won’t last forever, and wherever we are, we need water at the very least. That means a fire to boil it. That means rocks and sticks and… please tell me you brought your lighter.”

“Of course,” Marilynn scoffed. She took it out of her pocket just to prove it.

“My dear, darling pyromaniac, how I love thee.”

“I know.”

Enticed by the idea of an open flame, Marilynn began scouting the area for a good fire pit. Fortunately, she had lots of stone and bare dirt to work with, and down the high hill they’d appeared on stood a great selection of dry-looking brush and grass.

“I’ll look for some water while I get sticks and kindling,” Elyse volunteered. It was an unspoken truth that Shrubby was master of the fire, and this was hardly the first time Elyse became the fuel gopher as her friend coaxed a conflagration to life.

“Cool.” Marilynn waved vaguely upwind. “Pile stuff there. I’ll let you know what’s good.”

They spent the next hour working towards a fire. Marilynn cleared a spot at the foot of the heap of boulders, circled it with stones, and started judging Elyse’s finds. About half of what she brought got tossed back into the wilderness.

“Too green. This will smell. The sap will smoke. What the fuck even is this? Get more grass. I think we’re ready for a bigger stick.”

Elyse found no water, which made her feel thirsty on principle, and she realized after two hours of staring grumpily into their little campfire that she didn’t have anything to boil the water in anyway. The realization let her off the hook, but it didn’t exactly make her feel better, and it didn’t help Shrubby’s mood, either.

“We’re camping with no gear,” Marilynn said. “This is how idiots get killed.”

“Maybe someone will see the fire.”

They both looked into the distance, marveling at how well the gibbous moon illuminated the river lands. The light cast shadows perpendicular to those cut by the fire. Their fire-shadows reached back towards the rocks. The moon-shadows stretched down the hill.

Pretty as they were, the moon and fire forced the girls to face facts: they were alone. No other fires and certainly no electric lights twinkled below. The view stretched for miles and miles. It wasn’t possible to see no house lights, glowing shop signs, or high-beams from passing cars over a space that wide. Light traveled far. Apparently, so had they. The gap led them somewhere, then it closed, and now they were on their own.

“We should move on in the morning.”

Elyse didn’t want to say it, but someone had to.

“You aren’t supposed to move if you get lost.” Shrubby poked her blaze with a long stick. “That’s survival 101. It makes you harder to find.”

“I don’t think there’s anyone out here to find us.”

They sat with that uncomfortable truth for all of a minute before Shrubby took charge of the situation.

“Okay. We’ll go in the morning. And we’ll try to figure out the water situation.”

They scooted together, pressed close beside the fire as their minds spun and darkness fell.

“Sounds like a plan.”

* * *

Since it wasn’t much of a plan, it couldn’t really go wrong. So long as they moved somewhere else and looked for water they succeeded. By that rubric, they did succeed. By any other standard, they ended their first full day with a loss. They did not find water. The river was actually very, very far away, and although they did make some progress, they had no idea where they were going, and the terrain sucked. It sucked worse towards the river, vaguely westward, so they moved east, looking for little tributaries or pools in the dips between foothills.

Elyse developed blisters before noon. Marilynn caught up by evening with a horrible row of rashy boils along her bra’s underwire. They didn’t bother with a fire since they had no water and no energy to spare, and although the night turned a little chilly, it wasn’t really cold. Shared body heat made them comfortable – or as comfortable as they could be lying on rocks and twigs.

Quiet breaths and the thrum of beating hearts told the story of living bodies, the only familiar thing the friends could enjoy. Shrubby had horribly boney shoulders, but the ground was even less forgiving, and Elyse curled up against the pokey elbows and knees without a second thought. She tried to pretend they were just drunk, half asleep on Shrubby’s couch with a few empty wine bottles judging them from the coffee table. It was a game, like they played as teens, making up adventures and staring up at the glow-in-the-dark stars as they tripped between worlds and whirl-wind romances.

At least she could pretend until daybreak. But the light shattered every delusion.

She sat up and looked around at the lovely rocks and trees they’d sheltered under for the night.

“Fucking fuck.”

Marilynn stirred beside her, glaring at Elyse and the world in general for disturbing her fitful sleep.

“Good morning to you, too.”

“Sorry.” Elyse picked a pebble from the mess of roots to her left and turned it over, feeling like a seven-year-old examining rocks for her collection. Strange how something so innocent gathered so many dark connotations with age. A child filling their pockets with rocks brough smiles and exasperation. A woman filling her pockets with rocks, well, that brought to mind a far more morbid pursuit.

Of all the ways she’d thought of dying, Elyse never thought she’d perish from dehydration in a world on the other side of a waterfall.

Another world. No avoiding the truth at this point. She chucked the stone as far as she could, and it rustled and clacked down through the brush and onto the hard ground out of sight as Elyse’s mind turned over the inevitable.

“Are we gonna have the talk?” she asked.

Marilynn wriggled upright, still glaring vaguely.

“Which talk?”

“I assumed we both know where babies come from, but I think this,” she gestured at the primal landscape, “needs discussing.”

With a few more blinks, the sleepiness drained from her friend’s eyes, but the fatigue remained. She looked around like she expected something new, like she was somehow confused by Elyse’s suggestion.

“Rocks.” Marilynn pointed as she spoke. “Trees. Rocks. Trees. Fucking root that stabbed me in the back last night.” She held out her hands, encompassing every bit of offending nature in sight. “Wilderness. What?”

Elyse wasn’t sure if Marilynn was still in denial or just carefully ignoring the bigger picture to preserve her sanity. Either way, there was no point having this conversation if she wasn’t ready for it. Some things were too big to understand up close, and right now they were awfully close to this whole mess.

“Maybe we died and went to Middle-Earth. Like that fanfic you wrote when we were kids.”

Some things Elyse preferred stay in the past – like that shitty, shitty fic. “Shut the fuck up, Shrubby. Never mind. Just… let’s get moving.”

No matter where they were, if they didn’t find water very, very soon, their misadventure wouldn’t last long.

* * *

They got lucky. Just when Elyse knew they were fucked for sure, they found a stream. Neither felt like building a fire, and they prayed to their respective gods as they drank to ward off Montezuma’s Revenge as they slurped the clear and very cold water from cupped palms.

“Christ,” Marilynn sighed, water dribbling down her chin. “This tastes good.”

Elyse gurgled her agreement as she gulped away her own thirst.

Their luck held. They didn’t throw up, and they didn’t develop crippling diarrhea. In a land barren of drugstores, clinics, and basic filtration, minor complications could and would bring their adventure to a gruesome end.

Death by shit creek was a hell of a way to go.

Lying under the stars beside her best friend, Elyse giggled at the thought. The last vestiges of pink were losing their grip on the edge of the horizon, the brook’s friendly babble sounded so nice after days of nothing but wind and crunching steps in dry bracken.

“What’s funny?” Marilynn grumbled.

“Nothing, nothing.” Elyse smiled to herself, feeling warm even as the temperature dipped. “Just a funny thought.”

Marilynn belched, and they both giggled.

“I fucking love hydration.”

They dozed, side by side a few yards away from their new best friend – fresh water. It sounded like a lullaby in the dark, and the spring didn’t sing alone. Night birds came for the same reason the girls did, and they warbled and squawked along, unseen. For the first time since she felt that smug satisfaction in the stone, Elyse felt hopeful. They didn’t know where they were, but they still _were_ , and that was something.

_I drink, therefore, I am_.

She smirked. She’d have to share that in the morning. Shrubby would appreciate –

A roar shattered the peace, and both girls sprang awake, pressing together like rabbits as they looked blindly into the dark. All the birds took flight in a screaming mass, and Marilynn’s hand snatched up Elyse’s in a death-grip.

“The fuck was that?”

“T-rex?” Elyse whispered.

“Fuck you. Fuck that and fuck you. There are no T-rexes in Canada.”

Elyse blinked. She couldn’t see much of anything, but she whipped around to stare at Shrubby anyway. “Canada? You think we’re in Canada?”

“…Yes?”

“Fuck you. We’re not in Canada. Racist.”

“How is that racist?”

“Xenophobic then.”

“Shut-up. And seriously, fuck you, that was not a dinosaur.”

Another roar, farther away, echoed through the trees.

“Either it’s going the other way, or there are two T-rexes,” Elyse mused.

“Fuck you. There are not two.”

A third roar arrived, sounding even fainter, and both girls relaxed into each other.

“It’s fucking off,” Marilynn said. She licked a finger and held it aloft. There wasn’t much wind, but enough air moved between the trees to chill her skin. “We’re downwind. That’s good.”

“Great. I don’t think we’ll be sleeping anymore, though.”

“Oh, no, absolutely not.”

And they didn’t. But they didn’t talk much, either. T-rex or not, whatever made that roar sounded predatory as hell and big as a moose, so regardless of whether or not they were in Canada, they didn’t feel like drawing attention to themselves. They sat awake with their thoughts, trying to rationalize their situation.

Morning came, and they filled their bellies with water.

Everything seemed friendlier in the sunlight, and Elyse peered around, considering their route while Marilynn muttered behind her.

A fistful of greens popped into her face. She looked up at her friend, and Marilynn shook the leaves under her eyes.

“Plantain! These are edible!”

Elyse spotted the spindly stems towering over the plantain’s trademark broad leaves just a few yards from the mossy patch they had slept on. Sure enough. The creek provided all kinds of blessings.

“Thanks.” She filled her mouth and took her time chewing. Saliva flooded free, and she couldn’t believe how tasty the undressed leaves tasted. They weren’t calorie rich, but Shrubby was right – they were perfectly edible. She knew them as cottage medicine, but that didn’t mean they weren’t food. If only they could find a few dozen cattails, maybe they’d make it... somewhere. Still, they gathered a little precious nutrition by obliterating the immediate population of plantains, and Elyse didn’t feel even a little bit sorry. They’d grow back. Their taproots mocked her attempts at weeding.

Elyse and Marilynn walked again, following the stream, because no way in hell were they giving that up. Besides, it flowed away from the night’s roaring not-a-T-rex. The benefits paired nicely, and the world felt a friendlier as the sun climbed higher and the copses of trees thinned into wide swaths of open meadow. The view stretched for miles in some places, and still they saw no sign of human habitation. No contrails. No helicopters. No roads or lights or smells of diesel. Elyse hadn’t even spotted a falling wall or a cleared field. There was nothing to suggest human habitation, past or present.

And then, suddenly, there was.

The light brightened, the oak trees thinned, and a golden meadow spread itself at their feet. It wasn’t the first meadow they’d seen during their involuntary hike, but it was the first one with hedge. And a fence. And domesticated animals. And a house.

“We’re _saved_.” Marilynn shot Elyse a brilliant grin. Then she took off. Elyse followed half a breath behind.

Long grass whipped around her legs, the yellow sea dotted with blue and red flowers, and she leapt from step to step, filled with careless glee. If she tripped in a gopher hole, it didn’t matter. They had finally found someone, and soon they’d be bundled back to civilization. Nothing else mattered. Not how they got into this mess, not how they got out of it. Whatever this misadventure was, it was over.

Oh, she was going to sleep for a week, in a bed – with pillows and clean sheets and a fluffy blanket – safe and warm until she woke up to a lovely breakfast full of unhealthy, tasty things like bacon and cinnamon rolls. The internet called her. She had people to update, and updates to receive. People must be worried. She had certainly been. And then there were the logistics of getting home…

The biggest bee she’d ever seen swooped into her face, and she came to a screeching halt to avoid it. It buzzed so loud and so close to her nose she felt it in her teeth. But it didn’t land. It bobbed along, fat and lazy and laden with pollen, and Elyse looked at the charming farmstead with fresh eyes.

Everything was wood. Well, alright, that wasn’t so strange, especially so far away from civilization, but there was a lot of it. The ponies pranced and trotted with a freedom suggesting the fence was to keep them safe, not contained. Geese wandered free. Dozens of those big, fat bees hovered and dove around the place, and the happiest looking cows Elyse had ever seen stood in the shadow of a hand-hewn barn.

Too colorful. Too wild. Too… everything.

And where were the people?

Elyse knew her Grimm very well, and like hell would she skip blindly into such an obvious Hansel and Gretel situation.

“Marilynn,” she called.

“Yeah?”

“Let’s – uh – let’s take a minute here.”

Marilynn stopped, quizzical, but she came back to Elyse’s side. Restrained energy shivered in her frame. “Are you okay?”

Without taking her eyes from the house, she nodded. “Yeah, I just don’t think – this doesn’t feel right.”

“Are you kidding? It’s beautiful!”

“It’s too beautiful though, don’t you think?”

Marilynn looked around. She saw all the same things, but her enthusiasm would not be contained. “I don’t think it’s a bad thing.”

“Not bad, just not right. And we shouldn’t just go barging in. We don’t know who lives here. Could be an antisocial serial killer with a penchant for woodwork.”

Marilynn gestured at the plethora of life snorting, squawking, and buzzing around them. “A serial killer wouldn’t take such good care of their animals.”

“I guess.”

“Trust me.”

“Last time I trusted you, the way home closed up behind us.”

The low blow landed hard, and Marilynn’s joy evaporated. Elyse touched her arm, trying to apologize without losing her impetus.

“We have to be careful. I trust you. And I’m sorry. Trust me?”

Marilynn nodded. Elyse led her by the hand to a small stand of trees at the edge of little farm, close enough to watch, but far enough from the fences to avoid trespassing. Just in case. Everything looked and smelled and sounded so wonderful, but in Elyse’s experience, small farmers in remote, mountainous territories kept shotguns and hunting rifles by the door. Best to have a plan and not startle anyone. They smelled alarming enough already.

“Does any of this seem off to you?” she asked.

Shrugging, Marilynn pursed her lips and squinted at the frolicking ponies. “Not really. Seems perfect.”

“That’s kind of my point.”

“Huh, well yeah. I do see what you mean.” Marilynn shifted closer, looking over their shoulders as something rustled in the underbrush. The sound seemed to remind her of the noises in the night, of the fact they weren’t alone. Her posture grew defensive, and she examined the yard with a fresh perspective. “It’s like… too nice. I’ve never seen so many different animals getting along so well. Even the geese. And how is this all so clean and neat? Where the fuck is the road? I don’t see any cars or tractors.”

Elyse nodded, glad to be on the same page again. “I know several small farmers. Even the old-school hedge witches have some modern tech. This house has no generator that I see or hear, and I don’t see anything electrical. There’s going off the grid and then there’s living in the dark ages. Even the Amish have more equipment than this.”

“Still, it isn’t like we have a choice. We need to ask for help.”

A deep voice from high above rumbled, “If you want to ask for help then ask for it.”

They leapt, squawking, and stumbled around to find a huge, hairy man with an axe.

Shrubby immediately grabbed the biggest available stick. Years of rough-housing with bigger cousins and a natural enthusiasm for friendly violence made her formidable, and even though she didn’t look threatening, Elyse had been on the receiving end smacks to know their power. Wonderful as Shrubby was, though, a stick would never win in an axe fight.

“Whoa!” Elyse grabbed the threatening end of the impromptu weapon and pushed it down, afraid to take her eyes off the big man as she moved in front of him. Her mouth went dry, and her throat closed up like it did in dreams so her voice couldn’t pass through.

When the man just stared down at them, waiting for – something – Marilynn surrendered the branch and spread her social butterfly wings. Marilynn was always Marilynn. Transitions meant nothing to her. A would-be enemy became a would-be friend (with a shelter and food), and she instantly forgot her defensive rage.

The stick went down. The smile went up.

“Sorry. We’re lost, and hungry, and we didn’t hear you come up behind us.”

The big man scoffed. “Sitting in the woods talking when your bellies are empty. Stupid thing to do.”

“Is this your house?” Elyse finally croaked.

“Yes.” The big man adjusted the axe on his shoulder and marched between the girls, who scattered out of his way. “Come inside and have some food… before you fall over, little strangers.”


	2. Fuck Me, Not Canada

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dear Shrubby,  
> I promised Elves in this chapter. I lied. Have some bees instead.  
> HAPPY BIRTHDAY

* * *

The big man led them inside his big house and had them sit at his big table. Elyse felt little again, proud she could reach the top without help. Marilynn sat beside her, hungry eyes roaming as the big man gathered bread, honey, and plates. Just because she was starving didn’t mean she’d lost her manners, but Elyse had to jam her nails into her palms as their host set down the food. Marilynn took a deep breath and closed her eyes, nostrils flared. Elyse stopped breathing altogether to avoid temptation.

The big man looked at them sitting there, clearly desperate to eat but waiting for his permission. He nodded and waved towards the food.

“Eat.”

They didn’t need a second invitation.

Elyse snatched up a hunk of bread and tore into it, all illusion of manners and restraint abandoned. Marilynn paused long enough to drip honey on hers, but the loaf met the same fate. After days of nothing but water and a breakfast of plantain leaves, they couldn’t eat as much as they wanted, and Elyse’s belly tightened after her first two pieces. Marilynn didn’t manage any more. As they chewed and swallowed the last mouthfuls of crusty bread, their savior served them again, setting down huge cups he filled with fresh milk from a pitcher longer than Elyse’s arm.

“Now your bellies are full, little strangers,” he said, “tell me your names.”

“I’m Marilynn.” She gestured with her mug. “This is Elyse.”

Head full of fairy stories about stolen names and enslavement, Elyse tried to wiggle out her mounting anxiety. Nothing in the house looked dangerous – except for the big man and his big axe – but her personal demons happily conjured horror from thin air. Her legs bounced uncontrollably under the table. If it weren’t so high, the cutlery would be dancing to the beat.

“From whence do you hail?” the big man asked.

“Ohio.”

Their host shook his head. “I have not heard of any such place. You are lost, indeed.”

Elyse wanted to tell him the whole story, explain about the gap behind the waterfall and the smug rock, but she would sound crazy, and they needed this big, hairy man’s help. Instead, she rocked in place, hands pinned under thighs. Marilynn glanced at her, and she grabbed her jug instead, hoping to drown her anxiety.

“Where are we, exactly?” Marilynn asked.

“Beorn’s Hall, near the Carrock, East of the Great River and West of Mirkwood.”

Milk spurted from Elyse’s mouth and nose. She wondered if it came out of her eyes, too. Every thought and hope froze as Elyse looked at the big, hairy man again, looked at the house, remembered the preposterous bees. This place looked more like Norse drinking hall than one man’s cottage, and even the wildest hippies didn’t dress like this. It all made sense. Unfortunately, that sense was nonsense.

Oh _fuck_.

Beside her, Marilynn shook her head, face twitching in fear and wonder. She looked for the joke, waited for the punchline, and when one failed to appear, she took a sharp breath. “We’re where?”

“My home,” the big man – _Beorn_ – said. “My hall, between –”

“The Great River and Mirkwood,” Elyse repeated. She turned unblinking eyes to Shrubby. She heard her own voice murmur, “Excuse me for a moment.”

On unsteady legs, she tripped and tumbled free of her seat on the high bench and stumbled into the open air. Her hands found her knees and she tried very hard to keep all that lovely bread in its new home as Marilynn ran up behind her.

“Are you going to throw up?”

“I’m seriously thinking about it.”

“But we’re in Middle-Fucking-Earth!” Marilynn’s face glowed. She swung open her arms to embrace the world of childhood dreams and endless longing. “This is awesome!”

“Yes! This is awesome.” Elyse knew she would throw up. Right then and there or sometime later in private, but too much angry bile swirled in her gut for a peaceful evening. Shrubby’s unbridled joy just made it all worse. “And we’re going to die!”

“We are not going to die.”

Closing her eyes against the sun, the view, and Shrubby’s face, Elyse straightened. Hands on her hips, breathing deep and slow, she tried to redirect her fear and discomfort. She already hurt her best friend once that day. She didn’t want to make it a habit. “Neither of us know how to fight. We have no marketable skills. Most importantly, how the fuck do we get home, Shrubby?”

“We made it this far. And now we have some help. We’ll go to the Elves – or we can find Gandalf!”

Elyse snorted, smiling against her will. “Find Gandalf? I don’t think anyone really finds Gandalf. You just sort of go looking for trouble and hope he finds you.”

“Fair point. Galadriel, then.”

That might work, actually. “It’s a long way to Lothlorien.”

“Some hundreds of miles.”

Again, they looked to find Beorn towering behind them, thoughtful scowl folding his face into a distinctly bear-like expression. Elyse wondered how she hadn’t seen it before.

“Orcs stalk the river, and wolves creep from the forest at night.” His eyes narrowed at their clothes, their shoes, and their sunburned skin. “I do not think you would live three days on the road south.”

Still bent over her knees, Elyse let her head fall forward with a groan. “What are we going to do then? We can’t go home.”

“And why not?”

Marilynn rubbed soothing circles on Elyse’s back. “The path disappeared behind us.”

Elyse didn’t comment on the wisdom of sharing that tidbit. She thought she’d vomit if she opened her mouth.

“It must be a far, strange sort of place,” Beorn said, “where women grow blue hair and travel without cloaks or packs.”

Elyse wheezed and Marilynn stifled a laugh behind her fist. “Very far, and very, very strange.”

Beorn rolled his shoulders back and sighed with his whole body, like a horse at the sight of a saddle. “Then you had better come inside again, and this time you must tell me all, so we may better find your road again, little strangers.”

* * *

They told Beorn as much as they could. He got a skeleton of a story – a different world, slipping behind a waterfall, that his home matched a story in theirs. Flesh would make it dangerous. They confirmed they recognized his name, his hall, and the nearby realms, but they couldn’t offer much more.

Beorn didn’t know the year.

Not a surprise. He was a recluse, after all, but without a year, they had no way to tell past from future. No asking about hobbits and dwarves, then. No inquiring after Gandalf. They had their wits, a whole lot of ancient lore, and several books of secrets. It wasn’t a promising armory for two women facing a perilous journey.

But Beorn was a kind host, if short on words, and he didn’t immediately banish them from his hall. That was something.

Marilynn and Elyse bedded down on the comfiest straw they’d ever felt and dozed in front of a banked fire. Beorn left after dark, and as his bear form’s roars reverberated through the vaulted roof, Marilynn cackled.

“Fuck you. I knew it wasn’t a dinosaur.”

Elyse hummed, already half asleep. “No. Just a bear man.”

So.

Not a dinosaur.

Unfortunately, dragons did exist.

* * *

“I have asked the birds to find the brown wizard.”

The girls looked up from twin bowls of oats, Elyse with cheeks puffed like a chipmunk.

“That’s great!” Marilynn said, taking the opportunity to add more honey to her breakfast. “He should be able to help or at least get in touch with someone who can.”

Elyse nodded and swallowed. Her eyes traced after her spoon weaving infinity marks in her food. “How can we help while we’re here?”

“Yeah,” Marilynn sat at attention, “we don’t have anything to repay your hospitality, but we’d be happy to do chores or something.”

“I will think on it.” Beorn sauntered to the door, his frame making his steps look slow. “And ask the beasts.”

Marilynn continued eating, but Elyse hypnotized herself with her spoon, endlessly stirring as her thoughts climbed, crumbled, and came together again in a perfect loop. After the initial shock, neither of them felt all that surprised or horrified by the idea of walking through a fairy tale. It was old territory, really. In many ways, this place felt like home. They grew up with the Fellowship, learned about love from Frodo and Sam, Luthien and Beren, Faramir and Eowyn. Men of Gondor and Elves of Rivendell set the standards they held potential lovers to – not necessarily in looks, but in honor, courage, and taste in fiction.

It all felt as familiar as a yard full of wild violets in the spring, wild clouds on the horizon, blue skies overhead and Shrubby’s long fingers weaving blooms into crowns.

Should it feel like that, though?

Elyse knew she spent too much time in her head. Hazard of the job, but also a safe haven. Her meditations were physical – gardening, walking. If she just sat and looked inside, she wasn’t sure she’d want to come back out. That way lay danger, especially when the world turned sucky. Was she lost inside right now? She didn’t feel the temptation to do anything stupid, but…

Marilynn belched, and her clattering spoon sent her bowl ringing.

“That was good.”

Elyse swam back to the front of her mind, rubbing the rough wood grain under her hand and the pressure of concealed oats against her spoon.

Shrubby patted the free hand, then caught Elyse’s expression and left her palm flat over Elyse’s fingers, anchoring her.

The oatmeal had gone cold, but she wasn’t really hungry, anyway.

“I’m glad you’re here.”

“Me, too.” Marilynn’s left hand crept beneath to cradle Elyse’s. Encompassed in Shrubby’s callouses and scars, she felt a little better. “You okay?”

“Yeah.” Her smile twitched up softly, flickering just enough to assure Shrubby it was still alive. “I am now.”

“Good.” Marilynn squeezed.

A fat bee plopped in Elyse’s bowl. The sticky contents clung to its legs, and as it tried to take off again, more of the goop spread over its wings like glue. Elyse fished it free with a spoon. The table only sported milk again, and she carefully maneuvered off the bench and out of the hall, balancing the bee spoon. Dairy probably wasn’t the best bath for an insect. She needed water.

Ten paces from the door, she found a trough. It looked clean enough. No hay or floating spittle, and she could see her own reflection mingled with the clouds when she peered in. Marilynn had followed her, and she quickly scooped some water to clean out her bowl as Elyse tried humming to bee as it twitched at the edge of her spoon.

“Just a sec. We’re going to get you a bath. A very shallow bath. Just hang on, kay?”

Shrubby listened and refilled the bowl half an inch. Once her offering sat ready next to the trough, Elyse delicately rested the tip of her spoon in the water. The bee floundered free, buzzing in circles like a hovercraft as it ditched softening globs, which Elyse gingerly removed from the bowl as they floated free. Several long minutes of buzzing and preening with its furry forelegs, the bee climbed the rim to dry in the sun. In another quarter of an hour, it took off, bobbing towards the flowers in the ponies’ meadow.

“Get me some glass fucking slippers,” Elyse said as their breakfast guest flew free. “Because I’m a god-damn Disney princess.”

“ _We_ are Disney princesses.”

Elyse bowed graciously. “Yes, majesty.”

“You should address me as _highness_ , actually.”

“Well, _actually_ , fuck you.”

Beorn came back to the house after a long, bright morning to tell them in so many words that the ponies “would have them.” Apparently, that meant the ponies had nothing against a good brushing and a comb through the mane, even if their master didn’t have time to do the brushing himself.

Marilynn leapt straight over the moon. They spent the rest of the day playing with his little ponies.

* * *

They rested in Beorn’s Hall for three days, brushing any animal willing and running from angry gaggles of geese. Beorn didn’t ask for any help with the bees, and neither girl volunteered. When they weren’t being vaguely useful, they ate good, simple food – generously doused with honey – and sat talking in the hay. Much as they liked the outdoors, the roof became a welcome novelty after several involuntary nights out, and Shrubby was enamored with the open flame.

Elyse recognized the days’ passing, but she didn’t feel it. Tangerine sunrises kissed her awake through the ceiling smoke holes, and she sat licking honey from her fingers on the fence as vibrant sunsets burned the sky neon pink. She saw the rising and setting and understood what it meant, but she felt like a boulder in the creek. Time streamed by, parting around her. She sat unmoved.

As the sun touched the horizon on the third evening, a swallow’s wings caught the sun. Elyse watched it flit to the side of the house where Beorn stood shirtless with his axe, chopping firewood. Judging by the garden, it was nearing summer, and Elyse doubted the shape shifter would keep the fire lit at night if not for Marilynn’s fascination. All those flames ate up a lot of wood, though, and he took up his axe often. The bird landed on a post at his shoulder, and Elyse saw the shape shifter’s mouth moving from a distance. She couldn’t hear from so far away, but she assumed the conversation must pertain to Beorn’s houseguests when he looked in her direction. With a nod, he summoned them to the house.

“Hey,” she threw the knot of grass she’d twisted at Marilynn’s head. “Get up.”

“Ugh. Fuck.” Shrubby rose to her elbows, bits of hay and clover stuck in her hair. A sleepy squint around the meadow told her nothing, and she squinted just as sleepily – with a touch of menace – at Elyse. “The fuck?”

Elyse gestured towards the hall. Beorn was just stepping inside, setting his axe to lean against the doorjamb.

“Okay. Alright. I’m up.”

Elyse offered a hand to heave Shrubby upright, and they made a slow march to the house. Beorn didn’t really summon them for things. They already knew to be inside by dark, and he offered food at the usual three points of the day. If they missed mealtime, it was usually because they got carried away with the animals, and they’d come inside to find bread and cheese under a cloth. It was all very informal, almost careless, but they were uninvited guests and he had no reason to coddle them. He had no reason to fear them, either.

This summons meant something. Neither of them wanted to leave. Their bellies remembered the hollow lonesomeness of the wild. But a niggling anticipation told Elyse this would be their last night under Beorn’s roof.

She walked hand in hand with Shrubby, drank in the warm, dry smell of the shape shifter’s home, and the sat across from Beorn at the table, ready to hear the swallow’s report.

“The brown wizard is to the north. You will reach his camp in two days if I lend you ponies for the journey.”

Marilynn clapped, nodding to herself. “We could do that. We can ride for two days.” She looked to Elyse, repeating herself, like a benediction. “We can do that.”

“Good.” Beorn set his heavy hands flat on the table between them. “I will lend you two ponies and give you provisions for many days. The brown wizard may take you farther, and you may keep the bread and waterskins, but send my animals home when you find the wizard’s camp.”

Shrubby was right. They could ride for two days. How many days could they walk, though? Radagast would definitely take them somewhere, but that could be anywhere. Rivendell and Lothlorien were both hundreds of miles away. Only heaven knew where Gandalf was. They had a long walk ahead of them, and they’d be going through those orc-infested lands Beorn himself warned them about.

His eyes brooked no argument. He’d done what was expected of him as a host, and he must not dislike them to feed and shelter them so well, even though they must smell strange. But this was the extent of his charity. He did not know them. And, yes, they must smell extremely strange. It was time to give them to the wizards, folk who knew how to deal with strange little women from other worlds.

Beorn was a good sort of pragmatist, but pragmatism demanded they move on, so move they would.

Elyse bowed her head so low it knocked against the table. Beorn looked at her askance.

“Thank you for all you’ve done for us,” she said. “If we ever have a chance to repay your generosity, we will.”

Beorn nodded in return. “You are small and easy to feed. There is no debt, little strangers. Now,” he rose, “it is time for sleep. In the dawn, you will leave.”

They had a quiet night. No spark kindled a conversation. The morning’s plans dampened their spirits just enough to put out any urge to chat. There would be time on the road. It was more important to watch the fire and curl up deep in the hay as the wind whistled outside.

Still, morning came. They ate the bread and cheese set out for them. They stared around the warm hall one last time. Out of excuses, they slipped out the front door.

Beorn stood waiting with the two ponies he’d promised. They bore packs full of food, Elyse assumed, and were all tacked up to ride. The bear man held up two sheathed knives.

“Two little blades for two little women. May you only need them for casting sparks and cutting roots for the stew pot.”

“Thank you,” Elyse said, “again.”

Marilynn accepted her dagger with a grin. “I promise to cast lots of sparks and make very nice fires.”

“Do not burn my trees.”

Grabbing her friend in a one-armed hug, Elyse reassured their host. “She won’t. That’s what I’m here for.”

“You’re spoiling my fun, El.”

“Yes.”

“Be wary,” Beorn said, “and only travel in daylight. Do not go into the forest for Mirkwood does not offer shelter.”

“No worries there,” Elyse said slowly. “We have some idea of the things that rule Mirkwood – officially and unofficially.”

“Good.” Beorn watched them mount up and nodded his satisfaction. “Head north. The ponies know the way.”

At their master’s words, both beasts took the initiative and started off. They walked out of the yard, but they broke into a trot as they cleared the fence, and the girls gave them their heads. Wind rushed through Elyse’s hair, filled her lungs, and tore loose a smile. Feeling wild and more than a little reckless, she shouted over her shoulder.

“Goodbye, Beorn!” she called.

As a carriage wit, she didn’t have anything wonderful or memorable to say, and she doubted she’d have the guts to actually shout anything even vaguely insulting to Beorn, anyway. Bears could run very quickly, and his pony would happily turn around and deliver her back to the angry bear man. Still, she smiled when she shouted, and she hoped what she felt carried through her words.

Shrubby laughed beside her, just as wild and even more in her element. After so many days on foot, riding a pony felt like a ride in a Lambo. They had no idea where they were going, but they were off, and as sad as leaving Beorn’s warm shelter felt an hour ago, the wind repaid their sacrifice.

* * *

Sure-footed and hardy, the ponies made good time over the patchy woods and rocky hills east of the Carrock. The girls enjoyed the scenery much more without striding on blisters, and Elyse tried not to think about how bad she’d ache in the morning. Riding used a peculiar set of muscles, and even if she kept in shape, she’d walk like a B-film cowboy at high noon after a day’s riding.

Shrubby was the better horsewoman by several miles, and she took point. Her pony knew the terrain and required little guidance, but Shrubby kept her seat well and shouted back instructions as they rode over and down little hillsides.

“Lean back in the saddle! Put your feet forwards!”

“I’m going to lean you back in the saddle if you keep reminding me.”

“Sorry, I’m married.”

“Oh, fuck off.”

The sun beamed in a blue sky, and the sloshing water skins buckled to the saddle helped Elyse relax – as much as possible. Unlike Shrubby, she did not get proper riding lessons when she was young, and she only knew the basics. She was glad they had ponies and not horses. Elyse was short. That gave her a special kinship with ponies. Horses literally looked down on her.

Camping at sunset felt more like an adventure and less like doom than their last trip through Beorn’s territory. Shrubby set a good fire while Elyse figured out how to unburden the ponies. Together, they brushed down their mounts with fistfuls of dry leaves to soak up the sweat, and then they left the animals to graze. Beorn didn’t provide rope or stakes for tethers, but his beasts knew their work, and they didn’t wander off.

They ate, then they slept, and the ground was uncomfortable enough that they had no problems rising with the sun.

Elyse was right about the aches and pains, and she commenced bitching the minute she stood up.

“Sitting on a pony all day should not hurt this much.”

Marilynn shrugged, helping Elyse cinch up her saddle and arrange her pack. “You aren’t just sitting, though. It’s like doing a squat, holding a yoga ball between your knees and balancing on a small boat at the same time.”

“All day.”

“All day.”

“I still think it shouldn’t hurt this much.”

“Suck it up.” With a friendly swat to the shoulder, Marilynn mounted up, and after a bit of hopping with one foot in the stirrup, significant cringing, and dramatic yelps of pain, so did Elyse.

“I may actually enjoy hiking after this.”

“I doubt it.”

“Yeah, me, too.”

* * *

Hunger for answers urged them on, and they only stopped once to rest the ponies.

What would it be like to meet a wizard? Would Radagast feel different somehow? Beorn hadn’t really, even though he smelled like a dog that rolled in honey.

Elyse had questions. She hadn’t told Shrubby about the smug rocks. She wasn’t sure how to. But maybe Radagast could fill in the blanks and offer a simple solution to this mess. Best case scenario, he would tell her rocks couldn’t be smug, that it all stemmed from an overactive imagination and a touch of shock.

If he couldn’t tell her that, she wasn’t sure what that would mean for her, even if they did make it home.

“We should be getting close,” Marilynn said.

“Good. This pony has officially broken my ass.”

They only had a few hours of sunshine left, and they took Beorn’s warning about traveling at night very seriously. He didn’t say much, and what he said he meant. As one of the greatest badasses in Middle-Earth, e was also an expert on the subject of survival.

“He’s gotta be close.” Marilynn spoke to herself, but Elyse appreciated the reassurance.

If they didn’t find him that evening, it wouldn’t be the end of the world, but they’d be pissed, and Elyse suspected Marilynn would push for a night ride.

Marilynn crested the next hill, and Elyse urged her mount to catch up just as Marilynn called.

“El! We have a problem.”

Marilynn had already dismounted when she arrived, and Elyse all but fell off her horse to join her friend at the tell-tale circle of ash and half-burned sticks ahead of them. As Marilynn pressed her fingers into the pile, Elyse looked at the crumbled peak and distinct ashy footprints stomped about.

“This is stone cold,” said Marilynn.

Elyse pointed out her own findings. “And whoever lit this put it out again in a hurry. Stomped it out in a rush.”

Marilynn brushed her hands off on her jeans, face gathered in a frown. “We don’t know it was Radagast.”

“True. Let’s play Sherlock, though, and hunt for clues.”

Shrubby agreed and they split up to comb the area. While Marilynn looked around the big rocks sheltering the campsite, Elyse grabbed their collection of waterskins. She heard babbling water at the foot of the hill figured she’d save herself a trip later.

The ground became softer as she neared the water. Must’ve been a flash flood recently to keep the soil so moist. Mud sucked at her shoes, and she bent awkwardly over the stream to fill the skins instead of kneeling in the muck. The angle brought her face close to the opposite bank.

When she looked up, her blood froze.

The skins overfilled and burbled in her grip.

Perfectly preserved in the thick mud, several sets of insanely large paw prints danced along the water’s edge. Elyse spent enough muddy midwestern springs in the park to recognize a dog’s print. These could’ve belonged to a dog – if it was the size of a horse.

Quietly and as quickly as she dared, she gathered up her things and trekked back up the hill. Shrubby’s voice carried down to her, muttering and swearing. When she saw Elyse, she held up a handful of fine white flakes.

“Pipe ash. Smoking isn’t as common this side of the Misty Mountains, is it? Maybe a Dwarf, but the footprints don’t match. This had to’ve been Radagast.”

Elyse walked past her, straight to the ponies. She beckoned Marilynn to follow, and whispered as she shoved the water into their packs.

“I found warg prints by the stream.”

Marilynn recoiled. “Are you sure?”

“Unless they breed wolves bigger than Beorn’s ponies here, yeah. Pretty damn sure.”

The campsite’s disarray took on a darker meaning, and they scanned the underbrush and distant hills with fresh attention.

“It’s getting dark,” Marilynn said. “I know we shouldn’t travel at night, but…”

“If we wander around in the dark, they’ll just find us faster.” Elyse buried her hand in her pony’s mane, working through little tangles as she analyzed their options. “We should stay here and leave in the morning. Don’t go down to the water again.”

“Fuck.” Marilynn had tied Beorn’s knife to her belt with a bit of twine the first night. She squeezed the hilt til her knuckles turned white. Elyse knew the feeling.

“Fuck,” she agreed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Carriage wit" is a term coined by the Scarlet Pimpernel. It refers to someone who thinks of amazing comebacks to a joke, insult, or argument in the carriage on the way home.
> 
> I hate this chapter. It tastes like filler but had to be written, so here it is. Endless line breaks. Short as shit scenes. Blech. 
> 
> As the ending suggests, shit hits the fan next week.
> 
> Thank you so much for the kudos and comments! They warm my frigid little heart.


	3. Fuck Everything: Arachnophobia Edition

* * *

The sun’s dying light stabbed between the rocks, bathing the scene red. They unburdened the ponies and settled beneath a sprawling bush at the edge of the clearing with their packs. And then they waited. Elyse found herself looking east, looking for sunrise while the western horizon was still stained pink.

They were in for another long night.

Elyse had always preferred the night, or at least the in-between hours that buffered true daylight. She loved the stars too fondly and all that. Night in the wilds, though, was a whole different kind of dark, and now that she knew exactly what threats lurked in it, the shadows didn’t feel so comfortably anonymous anymore.

Only a sliver of moon glowed above them. When patchy clouds veiled it, Elyse couldn’t even see her hand in front of her face. She only realized she fell asleep when she woke up, and for a minute she wasn’t even sure of that. Every time she dreamed, she struggled to reorient herself, because her dreams had more realistic features than her current situation. Overflowing sinks, failing brakes, and forgetting where she was supposed to go on the first day of class belonged in the waking world, and skin-changers with their stories of orcs and wizards belonged in the dream.

The darkness only compounded the issue.

She only realized what was happening when Shrubby’s hand clamped down on her wrist. Her nails dug into Elyse’s skin, and as she drew a breath to hiss her displeasure, she heard the ponies scream. A big, stinking shape blotted out the stars, leaping from one of the sheltering boulders around their campsite with a snarl. A second rustled the bush they were hiding under as it rushed to join the howling pack as it converged on the pack animals. The girls pressed themselves as flat as possible, and they felt the animals’ heavy steps vibrate through the packed earth.

Grunts and growls of a different kind echoed over the stones, twisted voices squabbling and cheering as the ponies shrieked.

Elyse couldn’t breathe. She felt every living inch of herself, from her follicles to her toes. Every finger and crease of skin. And she wanted to keep it all. It was easy to theorize on the separation of body and soul when she didn’t have to worry about seeing her liver disappear into a wolf monster’s jaws, and just then she felt very much at one with her corporeal form. If the wargs sniffed them out, they’d _eat her_. Not her body. Not an it. Her. Her whole person. Shredded, ingested, and shat out.

Every prey instinct awoke, and her senses rushed to compensate for the darkness. She smelled the beasts, and she smelled blood and shit – probably from the disemboweled ponies. Hollywood liked to forget ripped intestines leaked literal shit. That was why belly wounds so often killed. It wasn’t just damage to the organs, it was the filth pouring into the bloodstream that nailed so many coffins closed.

She heard them all, too. The sounds were even worse than the smells, but after a few minutes of petrified listening, her animal brain came to a realization.

All the action was on the other side of the big rocks, out of sight in the direction they’d come from. The path to the stream was clear.

Afraid to speak, she pulled on Marilynn’s sleeve. She didn’t bother peeling off Shrubby’s death grip. It might help them stay together. The orcs jeered and laughed as a pony gave a final, hair-raising cry. Elyse crept from under the bush, her pack in her free hand, trying to move with the noise. Marilynn followed because she understood Elyse’s plan or just because she was attached at the wrist. Didn’t matter.

They felt their way down the hill, practically back to back. Elyse listened for the burble of water and Marilynn kept her eyes on the top of the hill. Hopefully if any of the wargs or their riders came sniffing around, their silhouette would give the girls some warning.

By the time they reached the water, a panic attack was fluttering in Elyse’s chest, cracking her composure and focus as it screamed for freedom. Her hands shook uncontrollably, and she couldn’t shake the sensation of her heart creeping up her throat.

The water came as a welcome relief, and she quickly waded to mid-stream, up to her knees, pulling Marilynn after her. It was deeper than she’d thought. In the daylight, it had looked no more than a foot deep. Water was tricky like that. Hopefully it would lend them a few of those tricks as they escaped.

She marched upstream, holding Marilynn’s hand as they fought the current. If the wargs didn’t find their scent for another hour or so, they’d have a great head start, and the orcs might not find them again. Water carried no scent, and the creek was more than deep enough to hide their tracks.

A slick rock shifted under Elyse’s weight, and she plunged face-first into the frigid water. Her shoes slipped over the algae as she tried to get her feet back under her. She held onto Marilynn, who tried to pull her up, and then they both went down. Both their packs were soaked, and when Elyse surfaced, she met Marilynn’s pale frown with one of her own.

“Fuck it,” she gasped. “Swim. Crawl. Whatever. Just – upstream.”

Marilynn nodded and maneuvered her pack over her shoulder. Elyse copied her. It was too late to keep their things dry, but they could prevent bits from washing away, and that counted for something, right?

They made less noise on all fours than they did on two legs, but they couldn’t move as quickly. Each moment lost brought those teeth and blades closer. Elyse wondered if she could scream like the ponies had, if she’d have the chance, or if the wargs would pounce from the banks and just stand on them, letting them drown as they bit into their backs. Their fears drove them on, and Elyse didn’t even realize that the morning she’d so desperately hoped for had dawned until the sun peaked over a hill and a stray beam glared off the water.

It didn’t give her the warm, fuzzy joy it would’ve twelve hours earlier.

“Shit.” She looked over her shoulder, and Marilynn sank low in the water beside her, listening for any signs of pursuit. Elyse grabbed her arm, but her fingers wouldn’t close properly. “Shit fuck.”

Marilynn had the same thoughts. “We have to get out of the water. Hypothermia.”

“Right. Yeah. Okay.”

Marilynn, barely able to stand herself, helped Elyse out of the creek, up onto dry land. By some miracle, her lighter had survived the swim, and it only took her fifteen minutes to gather enough dry grass and bracken for a small blaze. Elyse groaned as the heat sent shocks of pain through her frozen fingers, and Marilynn pressed so close there wasn’t even room for Jesus between them as she chanted her own litany of “Fuck, Christ, Jesus, damn, fuck.”

Elyse looked at the warming sky, shivering in an unwelcome breeze. “Do you think we lost them?”

“If we didn’t, I’m sure they’ll tell us.” Marilynn, sufficiently warmed, forced herself to her feet and clambered to the top of the hill, keeping low and peeping over to scout their surroundings. She practically rolled back down, cursing all the way.

“See anything? Where are we?”

“We’re closer to Mirkwood. Much closer than I realized last night. And the wargs are still close. We’re downwind, but the orcs are south and west of us. There’s no way to get around without them spotting us.”

“We won’t survive in that river much longer,” Elyse said. Warm weather or not, that water was colder than a breakup on Valentine’s Day, and even room temperature water could kill if you spent an entire day in it.

Marilynn threw up her hands. “River, woods, or wargs.”

“I vote against wargs.”

“And the river votes against us.”

“So the woods then.”

“Looks that way. “

“Just a hundred yards in. We’ll climb a tree until the wargs fuck off. They’ll get bored eventually, right?”

* * *

They walked beside the water for the next two days, only stopping long enough for Shrubby to scale a hill or a tree or a boulder to see what the wargs and their riders were up to. It was a terrible day. It lacked the energizing adrenaline rush of the night before, and while Elyse didn’t want the wargs any closer, dread only made the tedium worse. Walking, waiting, walking again. The threat lingered behind them, invisible, but persistent.

The warg pack moved slowly, probing both shores for signs of their elusive prey, and the distance grew to the point Elyse began to doubt the whole forest plan.

“Mirkwood is a bad place.”

“No shit.”

“If they haven’t found us by the time we reach the trees, we should just follow the border south.”

Marilynn snorted. “Dol Guldur is south. More orcs. More wargs.”

“But Mirkwood is –”

A chorus of howls rent the air. The girls exchanged a glance and ran as one to the top of the nearest hill. In the distance, lupine shapes milled around the stream’s edge, and loud, Orcish shouts carried over the empty land. One shape broke away, racing along the trail Elyse and Marilynn made the day before. The rest of the shapes wheeled around to follow. At that speed, they’d catch up before dark.

“Oh my god.”

“They definitely know where we are _now_ ,” Elyse spat. “Into the fucking forest of doom we go.”

They went as fast as they could, jogging and walking and wading back and forth through the stream in a desperate attempt to throw off pursuit for even a few precious minutes. The creek bed ran dry about half a mile from Mirkwood’s trees. Behind them, the howls got louder, and Marilynn ran with a hand on her knife.

Mirkwood’s shade closed over them like a giant’s jaw snapping shut. One minute, the evening light glowed gold. The next, an all-encompassing gloom swallowed them. It muffled Elyse’s senses, and her intuition almost sent her running back out to the wargs.

It felt like running into a spiderweb. She couldn’t feel the individual strands, but it clung to her, trying to still her, swallow her, and she couldn’t help the feeling the web would be strong enough to do just that deeper into the forest. Many nasty things wove this – whatever it was – and she didn’t want to meet any of them. The web was a living thing itself. It urged her to stumble forward, entangling herself as she struggled.

Marilynn yanked on her arm, and Elyse realized she’d frozen.

“Come on!” She yanked again, frantic. “Run!”

She did. Because the howls were so loud she imagined she could feel the wargs’ breath on the back of her neck. Because she could pick out words in the orcs’ shouts, and they promised worse things than a stifled death in the loamy paths of Mirkwood. Because she just didn’t have a choice.

She tried to convince herself, as they ran, that the trees were not in fact moving to confuse her, that it didn’t matter they weren’t on any kind of road, and that this would all work out in the end.

Marilynn kept her head. She never left go of Elyse’s arm, and she took advantage of the crowded trunks to stymie their hunters. Quick and graceful, she called on every bit of her mountain goat heritage to dash, dodge, and wind through the trees. She backtracked, laid false trails, even threw rocks to mislead one warg that came dangerously close to finding them.

Then she led them up a tree, urging Elyse higher than she’d ever voluntarily go, testing branches to ensure they’d support their combined weight before turning to give Elyse a hand up. Exhausted, dizzy from exertion and Mirkwood’s magic, they stayed in their hiding place.

Maybe Marilynn was a genius, or maybe the forest just didn’t want to share them, but the hunting party lost their trail. As the night deepened, all sound faded away. The girls slept fitfully on their perch until, realizing what an amazingly bad idea that was, Marilynn led them back to the forest floor. She pushed Elyse a little deeper into the woods. They more or less collapsed a few hundred yards away from their hiding place, and when Elyse woke again, the forest’s pitch black night had faded back into murky daylight.

She sat up, looking around blearily. The night’s chase was more fever dream than memory, and she couldn’t get her bearings, no matter where she looked. Nothing seemed familiar. As she rubbed crumbly leaf skeletons from her cheek, Shrubby sat up beside her, looking around with the same blank horror Elyse felt.

“Do you know the way back?” Elyse asked.

Marilynn glared at the trees, like she dared them to make her look bad.

“No.”

Elyse didn’t like that answer. “Maybe?”

Marilynn sighed. “Maybe. We can try.”

Springing to her feet, Elyse tried to dispel that sticky, spiderweb sensation by brushing down her hair and clothes. “Good. Let’s go.”

After a few false starts, they found their hiding tree. It didn’t make as good a hiding place in the light, and Elyse was very glad none of the wargs got close enough to see them make the climb.

From there, they only got more lost. No light from the edge of the forest filtered through the leaves, and the trunks grew wide and strong in every direction. There was no sign to point them out, and no path to follow. Although every turn introduced a fascinating new arrangement of lichen and withered underbrush, it all felt the same.

“We’ll just keep looking,” Marilynn said. “We didn’t go that far in.”

Elyse chose to believe her. She chose to believe her for three whole days. And then they both had to admit they were hopelessly lost. But they kept moving, even as their hope and energy drained away, because what else could they do?

The wood clicked and creaked, groaning like a monster clawing for breath. The air already tasted dead in the cavern between the canopy and the forest floor. It sat heavy in their mouths and lungs, making every gasp and wheeze a burden as they trudged and stumbled through tangled bracken. Trunks bent overhead like rotting ribs. Sudden valleys between the roots of ancient trees sent them sprawling, and Marilynn clutched the end of Elyse’s sleeve to keep from losing her.

Elyse’s screaming intuition eventually quieted. The magic of Mirkwood smothered it, she supposed, like venom paralyzed a snake’s dinner.

They slept when they had to and walked when they could. Dwindling rations were the only true measure of time. Elyse forgot that, between meals, and when she looked at the handful of dried fruit left at the bottom of her pack, all a little moldy from their dip in the river, she realized they’d been in the woods for ages. Days. Weeks even. And then they’d walk, and she’d sort of forget all that again.

They waded through loam so deep and soft it sucked off Elyse’s shoes. By that time, she was too dazed to mind all that much.

Her naked feet, however, were the first to sense the real webs of Mirkwood. She took a step and realized the ground was trying to come with her. Looking down, she found her foot snared in a thready white gob of spider silk, and although she still felt muddled as all hell, she understood exactly what that meant.

“Hey, Shrubby,” she said. “I’ve got some bad news.”

“What?” Shrubby looked at Elyse. Looked at her foot. “What.”

Elyse, looking up as Shrubby looked down, saw movement past her friend’s shoulder. It froze as she moved her head, and she might’ve dismissed it as a trick of the light or a minor hallucination, but she didn’t believe in coincidences. And tree limbs didn’t taper to end in such delicate points.

“Shrubby?”

Her friend met her gaze, eyes wide, nostrils flared. The sight of the giant web was enough to coax her arachnophobia to life. It overshadowed the forest’s muzziness. Adrenaline was, after all, one hell of a drug.

“Do you remember that one time when were kids, playing in the pool, and a big old wolf spider climbed up the wall right next to your head?”

Tremulously, Shrubby nodded.

“And I told you to step towards me, but you wanted to know why, and thought it was a game until you looked behind you?”

Shrubby froze. She actually stopped breathing.

“Um.” Elyse took one long step back. “Come towards me.”

A great, shuddering gasp heaved its way clear of Marilynn’s lungs, and a tremor ran from her shoulders to the tips of her fingers. She froze again, but she managed to take two big breaths. As she did, Elyse watched those suspicious limbs creep forward in a delicate roll, heaving up a fat thorax with silent grace.

Shrubby took one more deep breath. And then –

“FUCK!”

She tore off shrieking, straight past Elyse and back the way they came.

Keeping an eye on the seven-foot spider rising from its loamy ambush, Elyse shook her foot free of the web and turned on her heel. Shrubby had the right idea. Time to make tracks.

A wordless shriek led her straight to Marilynn. Shrubby stood with her knife out, swinging wildly at the air as a leggy menace the scale of a queen-sized mattress danced closer. Vigorous clicking rattled around the trees, but apart from that, the spiders attacked silently. Large as they were, they moved silently thanks to the weight distribution eight whole legs provided. And they couldn’t roar without vocal cords, so they hunted quietly, perfectly attuned to the tremors in their webs and the screams of the hunted.

Motion in Elyse’s peripheral snagged her attention, and she snapped her head up to see a much smaller – but still obscenely large – spider descending on a fat silk rope. Right over Shrubby’s head.

Elyse didn’t even think about her own knife. She lunged forward, knocking Shrubby out of the drop zone with a shout. Shrubby hit the ground with a squeal, and the bigger spider scampered her way. The small arachnid attempting a sneak attack dropped on Elyse’s head, throwing her off balance. As she fell, she threw her left arm over her face. The spider pressed in, stabbing at her arm with teeth or legs or something else that pierced deep as she struggled. If not for her arm, it would’ve taken an eye.

Shrubby’s foot swung into Elyse’s vision with a battle cry, tearing the spider from its grip on Elyse’s arm and yeeting it into the underbrush. She grabbed Elyse by the arm, trying to pull her away from the increasing number of spiders emerging from the trees. Screaming in pain, Elyse fought her help. Blood ran down from her forearm, and she could see an actual hole in the flesh where the spider tore deep into sinew and veins. It felt like she had a needle in her flesh, and the pressure from Shrubby’s grip was pure agony. Elyse fumbled upright just to stop the pain.

Spiders swarmed down from the canopy, and the largest beasts scuttled from the shadows in all directions. Elyse kept her knife in her pack, afraid she’d lose it after the long night in the creek, and she doubted the spiders would give her time to dig. So, she grabbed a big stick and prepared to fight, Shrubby-style.

Back to back, they faced down the horde, hopelessly outnumbered. Shrubby reached back, snaring Elyse’s left hand in a desperate, final hold. Elyse didn’t complain about the pain. She imagined they were both about to feel a lot worse.

One of the quickest spiders rushed forward, its eight bulbous eyes fixing on Elyse as it leapt.

She stared it down, realizing as it flew that she couldn’t raise her stick in time to save herself.

Then it jerked to the side, mid-flight. Eyes still locked onto the spider, she followed its new trajectory to a tree, where an arrow pinned it in place. She watched, hypnotized as the legs curled up in death even as sound exploded around her. Bows sang and arrows cracked through exoskeletons as the horde dropped dead, a dozen at a time.

Elyse’s stick fell to the ground, and she followed it, dropping to a knee as she gasped for air. She was caught between vomiting and sobbing, so her lungs decided irregular, pained breathing ala panic attack would do very well instead.

Behind her, Shrubby crowed a warbling sob of relief.

“ _Daro_!”

Elyse’s Elvish was rusty, but she still recognized _halt_ , which was pretty funny since she couldn’t be much more halted if she tried.

A thunk told her Shrubby dropped her knife, and several very pretty people of indeterminate gender with long hair and serious expressions stepped out of the trees. Four of them kept arrows trained on the two intruders, which Elyse thought was a bit of an overreaction, all things considered.

“Shrubby,” she groaned. “Say something nice, please.”

Marilynn spluttered. “I can’t think of anything.”

“You’re fluent.”

“I _was_ fluent. Ten years ago. And my mind just went blank.”

“Fucking hell, woman.”

An Elf with hair the color of burnished oak stepped forward, thankfully not with a blade. “I speak enough of the Common Tongue.”

Elyse sat, turning as she landed so she could keep Shrubby and their translator in view. “Thank stars.”

“You trespass in the Woodland Realm.”

“Entirely by accident,” Marilynn said.

The Elf, visibly disturbed, tore his eyes away from Elyse with visible effort to address Marilynn directly. “You are strangers, and you trespass. You will answer to the king.”

Elyse blinked up at Shrubby, who gestured to her head. Confused, Elyse reached up to pat her own head, looking for a third eye, massive lump, or anything else that might have so unnerved an Elf. And then it dawned on her.

“Oh. Blue. Right.”

The Elf looked back at her, and she made good on the opportunity.

“Before we go, I have an immediate concern.” She lifted her (still bleeding) left forearm for the Elf’s inspection. “I have an owwie.”

* * *

A Jack Russel terrier took a chunk out of Elyse’s calf when she was eight. The attack was so sudden and so vicious, she couldn’t remember the actual bite. One minute she was standing at her friend’s door, inviting her out to play, and the next she was lying on the ground, an adult yanking the snarling terror off her leg. She remembered the frantic drive to the hospital, convinced that she was about to die from rabies (she’d seen _Old Yeller_ , she wasn’t an idiot).

The march to the Elvenking’s halls was like that, but in reverse. She remembered every second of the attack, but the trip blurred. Shrubby stayed by her the whole way, even when she couldn’t walk on her own. But the path, the Elves, the magical views? One long green and grey blur.

Near the end of the trip, she must’ve looked especially wretched, because a sadly smiling female Elf – distinguishable by the tit bumps on her armor – gave Elyse a sip of something warm, sweet, and wonderful. Probably the Greenwood equivalent of miruvor. It did revive her enough to actually appreciate the forest around her and the giant gates looming ahead. Best of all, she found she could walk on her own two feet, though Shrubby held her arm like Elyse might fall over in a fart of breeze.

The Elves escorted them through the gates and through a bewildering series of walkways, passages, and stairs. They weren’t cruel. They slowed their pace enough for Elyse to keep up, but they weren’t particularly friendly, either. As they passed guards veiled in chainmail, Elyse grew more and more wary. She liked Elves. In general. Usually. But Mirkwood Elves had a _reputation_ , and she didn’t think they’d handle blue hair particularly well. Or American manners. Or, well, anything vaguely related to their situation.

The Elvenking wasn’t known for his catch and release fishing style, either.

There was no mistaking the throne room. Their escort brought them into a massive chamber, at the heart of which antlers from a megalithic elk framed a seat, which towered over a dais, a cascade of intimidation and display. And on that throne sat the pale king himself.

Elyse wasn’t sure if it was their fault or not, but he looked like he was having an off day.

Or maybe his face always looked like that.

Their guards brought them to the upper dais, pretty literally under the king’s nose, and retreated to the stairs. It left Elyse feeling exposed, which she assumed was the point.

The great king Thranduil did not mince words.

“You entered my kingdom without leave, roused the spiders, and forced my guards from their posts.” He said it flatly. As fact. This was not a trial, just a sentencing. “What business have you here? From whence do you hail?”

“We didn’t mean to trespass.” Marilynn held Elyse’s hand in her customary death grip, even though her eyes were all but bugging out of her face as she drank in the beauty of the elven kingdom… and the Elves.

Elyse had never suffered the same level of Elf-worship. She once argued with Shrubby for a full two hours over Túrin’s relative innocence in the death of Saeros in The Silmarillion. Even though Saeros was a little shit, and he was literally out to murder Túrin, he was still an Elf, and Shrubby forgave him all indiscretions. The story taught Elyse, on the other hand, that Elves could be spiteful fucks, that they were very capable of murder, and that they were even more capable of murdering a Man – or woman, as the case may be.

As Marilynn gawped and offered appropriately pretty words for the king’s pointed ears, Elyse watched his face very, very carefully. Or she tried. She felt cold in a sweaty way, and the chills were getting worse. Actually, the throne room seemed uncomfortably dark, and it took much more focus than it ought to as she tried to read the king’s frown.

Meanwhile, Marilynn continued with their plea. “Orcs chased us into the forest. We weren’t even following the Elven road. We’ve been lost for weeks.”

The king angled his head, looking for all the world like a shrike up on his high throne with his thorny crown. “And you survived for so long on your own, unaided?”

It wasn’t hard to read between those lines.

“Only thanks to pure, dumb luck,” Elyse slurred.

The king’s eyes flitted to her briefly, but Marilynn rushed to draw his gaze back from the weaker party. “We’re alone. We’re strangers here. We were lost even before we stumbled into your lands.”

As the king leaned back in his throne, Marilynn offered proof of their innocence. After all, these were Elves. In her eyes, they could do no real wrong. They were all total strangers – and all totally armed – but she trusted them implicitly.

“If you don’t believe us, you can have a scout ask Beorn, the Skinchanger. He gave us shelter for a few days.”

He dismissed her proof with a wave. “I would not waste a guard’s time for such a trifling matter.”

“Then how can we prove we’re telling the truth?”

“You cannot.” He frowned down at them. Elyse wobbled. Without Shrubby’s hand, she might have hit the floor. The king’s interrogation was far from over, though. “Do not imagine I have forgotten my second question. From whence do you hail?”

Marilynn opened her mouth, closed it, then nervously licked her lip. Whatever she said now, Elyse knew the king would assume she was lying.

“We’re from… very far away.”

His gaze turned dark, and his chin angled down for a sharper glare. “Do not presume to patronize me. There is no land, no people, of which I have not heard.”

 _Wanna bet?_ Elyse was too dizzy to snort, and she was glad.

Marilynn was less amused and much more desperate to win the king’s approval. “I’m sure there you know all the lands of Middle-Earth, great Elvenking, but we’re from… beyond the circle of the world. Not Arda.”

A cold smile greeted her claim. “And so the lies spring forth. It has been long since a mortal spun such a grand tale. I have few distractions. Do continue.”

A fire kindled in Shrubby’s eyes. Clearly, she’d gotten over the worst of her hero worship. Marilynn could be very patient, but she didn’t take disrespect well, and she tended to turn and fight rather than turn the other cheek. But now she wanted to prove herself and make the king eat that smirk.

“What year is it? Beorn didn’t know, but if you can tell me the year then we’ll tell you what ha-”

Elyse snatched Marilynn’s arm with her free hand and dragged her close, hissing in her ear, “Less wise and more dangerous.”

She tried to convey the rest of her meaning with her eyes, afraid to say anything else around such keen Elven ears. Blood and some kind of green ooze smeared through her bandage and sleeve onto Marilynn’s shoulder, and Elyse fought to keep the precious sips of water offered by the guards in her stomach where they belonged.

Although Marilynn’s leap to her own defense hadn’t roused the king from his elegant disdain, Elyse’s intervention caught his interest. He rose, and the whisper of silk over stone steps sounded at odds with the clash of spears slamming to block the girls’ unintentional step back.

“Do not stop now.” The king stepped down to join them on the upper dais, even more intimidating up close than he’d been on high. He peered down his nose at Marilynn. “A year, you say? If I give you a year, what will you tell me?”

Marilynn remained perfectly silent, eyes wide but lips pinched shut.

“Perhaps a year in my dungeons will encourage you to speak.”

Elyse wanted to stand in Marilynn’s defense, a thousand angry and clever things begged to be shouted in that stupidly pretty face, but she found she was rapidly losing the ability to stand at all. As she clutched tighter to her only support, something tugged at her scalp. She looked up to find the king’s hand in her face, a lock of her blue-dyed hair pinched between his fingers. He frowned at it, at her. Honestly, she didn’t like people touching her hair at the best of times, and this was far from even a passably good moment. She tried to pull out of his grip, but she just succeeded in pulling her own hair. Only when she stopped trying to jerk away did the king drop the tress.

“Whatever you are, from wherever you came, you are clearly no common Edain.” He drew himself up to his full, kingly height, hands behind his back, and glowered. “What secrets or foresight do you possess which your friend guards so zealously? Tell me, and I will spare you. Perhaps I may even be of aid in returning you to your home.”

Elyse swayed. Then fell. Marilynn half-caught her, and she shouted something that sounded very angry and frightened, but Elyse had a head full of visions of Thranduil armed with everything they knew. What if he improved security around the barrel drop? What would happen with Smaug and Erebor as the War of the Ring approached?

The Ring! What if Bilbo hadn’t passed through yet? What if the Elvenking caught him and took the Ring for himself? Even Galadriel couldn’t resist it for long, and unlike Thranduil, she’d been entrusted with one of the Elven Rings of Power. That was bad. This was bad. They couldn’t say anything. Not even a little.

“Don’t tell them anything,” she said, surprised by her own breathlessness. “Don’t.”

And then she passed out cold at the foot of the Elvenking’s throne.

* * *

“Elyse?” Marilynn’s voice broke as she crumpled under her friend’s weight. She sat heavily on the cold stone, staring at the filthy wound in Elyse’s arm. Blood was pooling in her resting palm. Something had gone badly wrong. She looked up at the Elvenking, still clinging to the fading hope that he’d do something to help them.

He gave the barest wave, and two guards wrested Elyse from her arms. A third held her back when she resisted.

“Where are they taking her? Will you help us?”

The king watched her coolly, and she strained to look over her shoulder as the two guards disappeared around the corner with Elyse.

Anger and desperation clashed. Fuck manners.

“Answer me!”

“Only once you’ve answered me.” He smirked as he spoke, and if it weren’t for the guard, she would’ve punched him in the face.

“You will have your year, here, as my guest.” The Elvenking turned away, and the guard yanked Marilynn to her feet. “If you refuse to share your counsel, then you will have another, and another, until you are too old to remember your tale. The years of an Edain are so few. I advise you surrender your answers soon.”

It took three guards to wrest her from the throne room.

They delivered her to a cell. Food and water were already waiting, but she just stared at them. And then she cried.

* * *

Elyse had strange dreams. Roots and branches tangled overhead, and shadowed lights moved around her. She was dreaming, but hadn’t she dreamed before? They found a gap in the rock, and they found Middle Earth on the other side. There was a bear-man, and a field full of flowers. Howls in the dark. A diseased forest, full of monsters. Then a new dream, this dream, and a pale, cold man with thorns in his hair glaring down as she grew sicker, and sicker, and…

“Do not break her fever. Keep her from death’s door, but let this malady loosen her tongue. I will have words with these Edain.”

She opened her eyes, surprised they weren’t open already, and met a blue gaze like crystal – clear, glittering, and dead. He came closer, towering above her, but then he bent down, and waves of pale hair rushed around her. Her brain decided she was drowning in that hair, and she tried to turn away from it, taking deep, frantic breaths, but a voice followed her.

“Your companion says you come from another world. And you clearly possess knowledge you should not.” Fingers took her chin, turning her back to drown in that pale waterfall under pitiless eyes. “Speak. Tell me what secrets you kept your friend from sharing with me, and all will be well.”

Those fingers felt impossibly strong. Or maybe she was just impossibly weak. Either way, those eyes, that hair, that frigid fucking face – they scared her. Her breathing stuttered. Another hand touched her face, wiping away a cold sweat.

“Speak,” the thorn king coaxed. His voice had gone soft with a lie. “You have nothing to fear.”

Pain, fear, and the awful heat in her blood confused her. She did have something to fear. She feared him, and there were stories she couldn’t tell him, and more than anything –

“I just want to go home.”

“Then speak, and I will let you go.”

She was shaking apart, and she could barely breathe. If someone cut her arm off at the shoulder, it would be a mercy.

“We have to keep you safe,” she whispered, losing track of the conversation, losing track of everything but the need to keep a secret. “We have to keep everyone safe.”

The hand the hair disappeared. She breathed a little easier, but she was still in so, so much pain. When she looked at the ceiling, the carved roots moved like snakes. She could hear them hissing.

* * *

“King Thranduil warned me to beware the fearsome witch in his dungeons,” a bright voice mused from beyond the bars. “But you do not seem so terrible.”

The voice broke a silence that haunted Marilynn for three whole days. No word from the healers. No summons from the king. Only the sound of rushing water and guards’ footsteps.

She looked over and saw a tall Elf with golden yellow hair smiling down at her. Unlike the Mirkwood guards who offered her shuttered looks of pity at most, the ellon seemed perfectly happy to look her in the eye and carry a conversation. His face and tone invited her to play with him, and she had the distinct impression he didn’t really belong in this dungeon either. He immediately put her at ease, and all her hope in the goodness of the Elves came rushing back.

Her fears and anxieties had built up behind a dam over those three days, though, and when she tried to answer, everything gushed out in a rush of word vomit Elyse would’ve been proud of.

“They took my friend to the healers. I think. I don’t know. She has blue hair. Have you seen her? Is she alright?” She approached the bars, threading her fingers through so she could hold onto _something_. She wanted Elyse’s hand back. “She’s sick. She fainted. The king says he’ll help her if I cooperate, but that will just make everything worse, and I don’t even know what’s happening anymore.”

The Elf lifted his hands to stem the flood of words, and Marilynn choked a little on something she refused to acknowledge may in fact have been a sob.

“I know not.”

Marilynn slumped, defeated. Her knees met the floor, but the pain barely registered beyond the aching fear pulsing in her gut. Elyse had a habit of getting very sick in very unusual ways, but she’d never seen her friend look so _awful_ , not even after surgery. Was she still alive? Would the guards even tell her if Elyse died?

A warm hand settled over hers. Although he still wore a kindly expression, the Elf looked troubled.

“Why are you in King Thranduil’s dungeons?”

“I promised not to tell,” Marilynn muttered. “Elyse told me not to. And she was right.”

“Tell what?” the Elf coaxed.

Marilynn’s defenses rose, and she reexamined the stranger. He was everything she’d ever imagined an Elf to be – tall, beautiful, with laughter buried deep in his eyes, even in this dungeon. It sharpened her sense of betrayal. “I thought I could trust the Elves. I thought they’d help us. Elyse was right, though.” She glowered through the bars. “You Mirkwood Elves are less wise and more dangerous.”

The Elf smiled again, wider this time. “Oh, they are that, but I am not of the Woodland Realm. I hail from Rivendell and the house of Lord Elrond.”

The hope in her chest, almost extinguished, roared back to life, and Marilynn sprang to her feet. The Elf, though surprised, followed her back up and waited patiently for her inevitable question.

“Who are you?”

“I am named Glorfindel.”

Oh, _fuck yes_. Marilynn pressed forward, like she could squeeze through the bars. “The balrog slayer?”

He blinked. “Yes.” Another smile, intrigued, but cautious. “You are well-informed for an Edain.”

“We need to speak to Lord Elrond,” Marilynn said, talking quickly before any guards appeared. “Or Gandalf. Or the Lady Galadriel. Someone more wise and less dangerous. Please! We told Thranduil the truth. We’re lost, and we came from beyond Arda, but he won’t believe us, and now if we say anything we could ruin everything, and, just – please! Can you at least find out if Elyse is alive?”

Glorfindel weathered the tidal wave of word vomit admirably, and he even looked like he understood most of it. But, then, he was a reincarnated Elf who had walked the shores of Valinor. He’d been beyond the circle of the world himself, really.

“That is a very strange tale,” he said. “And I am not sure of your entire meaning, but just because it is strange does not make it untrue. This is indeed a matter for Mithrandir.” He went quiet, and a moment later a guard appeared. The guard made no trouble, happy to let the honored guest study the bizarre little Edain, and the moment he was gone, Glorfindel continued. “I will find your friend and speak with her if I can.”

His hand came to rest on hers again, and peace whispered over the anxiety screaming through her system.

“All will be well. Be at peace, little lady fire.”

He left with a final smile, his golden hair floating around a corner. Marilynn didn’t return to the floor, but she rested her head against the bars, listening to the cavern’s echoes with the faint hope of hearing Elyse’s voice shouting “I told you so” in the distance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dear Shrubby - I did apologize in advance.
> 
> I am not dead, but I am in a state under a "shelter in place" order. In the past month, I got sick (not with Covid), then got busy as the programming director for a local con, and then got to redo everything/update the world when we had to reschedule at the last minute. Sunday updates are back!
> 
> Thank you all for the comments and kudos they mean a lot!


	4. Fuck Them All (Except Glorfindel)

  


* * *

  


Glorfindel went first to see the Elvenking.

There was little love lost between Imladris and Greenwood the Great. Thranduil and Elrond were as night and day, and Thranduil could not trust another ruler with such intimate knowledge of Thranduil’s own scars. The Elvenking suspected any guest from Imladris or Lothlorien of spying, which – to be fair – Glorfindel rather was. The evil to the south, spreading from Dol Guldur, haunted even Elrond, who had a wall of mountains between the threat and his own realm.

Although no one could easily refuse their hospitality to the Balrog Slayer, even he must tread carefully in the Elvenking’s halls.

He knew Thranduil to proud, arrogant even, but it was his fear that made him dangerous. As the darkness grew, Thranduil drew close all the things he loved and let his kingdom transform into a twisted wilderness that kept all others from his doorstep. Folly at best, a sign of growing shadows in the king’s mind at worst.

If Little Lady Fire in the dungeons spoke truth, then he could well understand their desire to withhold secrets of the future. The fact they doubted the Elvenking at all while the woman in the cell so readily trusting their fate to Glorfindel redoubled his private concerns. He, like Thranduil, remembered the days when Elves fought one another, when distrust barred him and his kin from other lands, and all their guarded prejudice eased the Enemy’s way.

He would not stand by as it happened again. But perhaps Thranduil had an explanation, and he would see the greater wisdom in the king’s actions. He doubted it. But he had always been one to hope.

He stepped through to the king’s study with bowed head and hand over heart. “Hir nin.”

Thranduil greeted him with all the warmth of a northern winter. “Balrog slayer.”

The king sat at his desk, a slim block of metal and glass in his hands. Glorfindel assumed it came from one of the two Edain found stumbling through Mirkwood. A second, rounded block topped with a wheel sat on the desk beside a delicate necklace with a pendant of knotted silver. While strange, he could neither see nor sense anything particularly dangerous about the objects.

“I heard a few healers murmuring in the halls,” Glorfindel said, casually daring a few steps deeper into the study. “I have studied healing, and I have more experience with Edain maladies. If your healers have need…”

“There is no need.” Thranduil clapped the strange tool on the table and rose with a hush of embroidered silk over stone. Even without his crown, he loomed.

Glorfindel nodded, folding his hands behind himself as Thranduil filled two goblets. The delicate scent of Dorwinion floated ahead of the cup he received, and he drank a deep breath before a drop even touched his tongue. As he sipped, he watched the king and listened carefully to the silence.

“What error revealed the witch in your dungeons to you?”

“She and her companion offered nothing to prove their innocence.” Thranduil spoke blandly, but Glorfindel watched as the king kept his eyes on his wine and the thing on his desk rather than the ellon with whom he conversed. This was not something into which he would welcome Glorfindel’s counsel. Nor his continued interest. “They are unnatural things. No great threat, but best kept securely, I think.”

With no invitation to prolong the discussion, Glorfindel reluctantly turned towards easier topics to veil his intent. And – oh – did he have mighty intent.

“I plan to take leave of your hospitality in the morn.”

A dark brow rose as the king finally met his guest’s eyes. “So soon? What a pity.”

Glorfindel laughed, quaffed the rest of his wine, and placed his cup beside the half-filled carafe. “I do love the company of the Woodelves, for few know how to make merry under the stars as your people, but there are pleasures and duties in Imladris to which I must attend.”

With a nod and a few polite words of parting, the king dismissed him, and Glorfindel wandered off to idle away his last day in the Woodland Realm. He stopped to chat with several members of the guard with whom he’d been training in the morning and wheedled a handful of candied nuts from the kitchen staff before strolling – apparently aimlessly – deeper into the mountain.

He found himself in the healer’s wing, and – entirely by accident – found the room where Lady Fire’s friend slept. It could be no other, for no elleth of his acquaintance in any lifetime grew hair the color of larkspur in a summer field.

Her eyes roved under bloodless lids, and her face glowed with sweat rather than health. He approached the bed, mindful of approaching footsteps as he puzzled over her condition. From what his little friend in the dungeons said, they had been attacked by spiders. As familiar with the spiders’ poison as the Elves of Mirkwood had grown, surely they could cure a mere bite. Something was not right. She looked like she had been tended to, and she rested in the healers’ wing. So why did she seem so ill?

He removed the bandage hiding her wound and hissed a curse. Veins blackened with poison crept up the girl’s forearm, spreading from a cut oozing tainted blood and puss. It was no bite, and it had not been healed.

An ugly suspicion guided his fingers to the length of arm just above the obvious wound. Gentle probing confirmed his fears. Something was in her arm, a hard spike, likely the spider’s sting. It must have broken off in the chaos, and it had been poisoning the woman ever since.

Any healer would recognize the symptoms or find the sting while cleansing the wound. This could only be intentional, a slow torture for which nothing more than apathy was needed. Thranduil wanted the Edain to speak, and he would use this fortunate accident to his advantage.

But Glorfindel hadn’t lied when he said he understood Edain better than Thranduil’s healers. An Elf could survive such a wound easily, and so long as the poison was cleared before death, they would recover. Edain were not so hardy. Intentionally or otherwise, Thranduil’s fears and greed had put this woman’s life in peril.

As he reapplied the bandage, Glorfindel planned his evening. He would need to visit the dungeon again, but not until the last, not until any suspicion would come too late to stop him.

He heard the young woman’s breathing change a moment before he looked up to find her eyes open, watching him. He smiled, gently finishing his work as she struggled to focus through her fever.

“Mae govannen.”

She smiled back, perhaps a little too delirious to be happy. “Hi.”

She blinked, one eyelid shuttering before the other. “Who are you?”

“Glorfindel of Rivendell.”

Her reaction echoed her friend’s. Brightening eyes, broadening smile, and… “You’re the ultimate cautionary tale for going into battle with long, pretty hair flying free.”

He reeled back, inadvertently tugging on her bandaged arm, and the pain jolted the girl back to herself. She clapped her healthy hand over her mouth, eyes bulging with horror and squeaked, “Oh shit.”

She shook her head, trying to clear it, but it only made her dizzier. Nonetheless, she succeeded in apologizing. “Did I say that out loud? I’m sorry.”

Having recovered from his own shock, Glorfindel found himself smiling again. He’d had thousands of years to cope with his trauma. No one hesitated to mention his slaying of the balrog, but he’d never had anyone joke with him about the experience. It was refreshing in a crass, Edain way.

“I take no offense.”

She lowered her hand but still looked deeply ashamed, even through the fever haze.

“I didn’t mean to.”

“All is well. I met your friend. You are Elyse?”

Her eyes closed. For a moment, he thought she might have fallen asleep. “Yes.”

“Good. Then all is truly well.” He patted her hand and rose. Her slowing breaths told him when she fell asleep, as he neared the door. Had he come a day later would she have woken to his touch at all? He had precious little time to waste.

He would indeed leave in the morn, but he would leave at a much earlier hour than his hosts would expect.

“Lord Thranduil gave orders. The woman is to receive no visitors.”

Glorfindel looked down the hall at the young elleth shifting awkwardly on her feet. A basket full of fresh herbs hung on her arm, and Glorfindel couldn’t help noticing the rolls of clean bandages gleaming between the leaves. He appraised the healer, wondering if the medicines she brought were meant for the stranger he’d just seen.

“There was no guard.”

The elleth bowed her head. She was very young, likely still an apprentice to the elder healers, and she had neither the experience nor the nerve to meet the gaze of one of the returned.

“There was no need,” she murmured.

“And there is still none.” Glorfindel strode past her, hoping she would keep her silence for the benefit of her patient.

Just before he turned the corner to leave the wards, the elleth asked, “Is she going to die?”

He paused. He felt for the young healer, powerless to do what all her training demanded. And yet, she still dared to care a little more than her king would wish, and for that, Glorfindel softened into a smile as he answered.

“Not unless you request a guard.”

* * *

Marilynn had found a half-healed scab at the base of her thumb, and she couldn’t stop picking at it. The skin underneath wasn’t quite ready for the light of day, and it oozed clear fluid that hardened and turned into a new scab – which she picked off a few hours later.

How was Elyse? Had Glorfindel found her? Even if he had, what would he do? What could he do? Maybe she should just tell Thranduil a few stories. Maybe she could lie. If it kept Elyse safe, it would be worth it, wouldn’t it?

Thranduil was still an Elf, and even if he was an asshole he wasn’t a complete monster.

She wasn’t sure if that meant she should trust him with the full truth or rely on the fact that a noble Elf wouldn’t let an unarmed woman die when he could easily save her.

Elyse’s favorite anti-Elf arguments echoed in her ears like her friend was sitting in the cell across from her.

Kinslaying taboos didn’t apply to Edain.

Elves had killed Men before.

Elves had no problem playing hide-in-your-treehouse while the world went to shit on several notable occasions.

They weren’t fucking angels.

Thranduil was a dick.

Marilynn wanted to argue with them all. She had argued with them for hours when it didn’t matter. But now it did matter, and she wanted things to work the way they were supposed to. Playing mind games with a king as her friend maybe died wasn’t how she pictured a journey to Middle-Earth. Then again, neither was crawling along a creek for days on end.

At least the Elves had tended her own cuts and bruises. She told herself that was a good sign.

A key turned in the lock, and Marilynn turned to find her cell door swinging open.

“Stir yourself. We must move quickly.”

She met Glorfindel in the space between captivity and freedom. He held out a cloak with a deep hood that she put on immediately.

“Did you find Elyse?”

“Yes.”

She opened her mouth, but he raised a hand. “I will answer all of your questions. But we must go now, and we must be quiet.”

That made sense. Her desperate curiosity burned her throat with pleas and demands, but she followed his instructions and trotted after him as quickly as she could. She felt like an elephant, of course, thundering along at an Elf’s heels, but she did her best. They only stopped once, for Glorfindel to return the keys to a pair of slumbering guards clutching empty tankards.

“Drugged,” Glorfindel whispered once they were well out of earshot. “They’ll be fine in a day or so, unless their captain hides them.” A little smile twitched around his lips. Despite the danger he was putting himself in for two strangers’ sake, he almost seemed to be enjoying himself.

Then again, Glorfindel did have a soft spot for the helpless, and Marilynn hated to admit it, but they were.

She hated that she didn’t have time to stop and gape. All her attention was on the Elf lord and his hurried steps. Only glimpses of glittering waterfalls and filigreed columns filtered through her periphery. All the ways she’d dreamed of visiting the Woodland Realm, and she didn’t get to enjoy a bit of it. The disappointment stung deep, but not as deep as her fear for Elyse.

“Where is my friend?” she whispered as they left the vast, echoing halls for a narrower passage. “We can’t leave her.”

“We will not. Trust me, little Lady Fire.”

She had no choice. So she did.

Several long minutes and a few stumbles in dim corridors brought them to another large chamber. The familiar smells of a hay, hair, and road apples reached Marilynn long before the sight of horse, and she wasn’t at all surprised when they slipped into a stable. She wasn’t expecting company, though, and she recoiled when she saw an Elf standing near a great white stallion.

But Glorfindel didn’t hesitate, and the Elf stepped back to reveal a very human-shaped bundle on the floor.

“Elyse!” Marilynn rushed to her friend’s side, only giving the Elves’ conversation half an ear.

“I gathered all the supplies I could manage without arousing suspicion,” the new Elf said. “Athelas, needle, thread…”

“It will be enough,” Glorfindel assured her. “You have my thanks.”

He touched Marilynn’s shoulder and she jolted, looking away from Elyse’s waxy complexion with wide eyes.

“Can you ride, Lady Fire?”

“Yes.”

“Good. I fear Asfaloth would be too burdened by three to make good our escape.”

He took her by the hand to the stall beside his beautiful mount’s. A dark-eyed gelding stood saddled and ready, clearly packed for a long journey judging by the two bedrolls and bulging saddlebags strapped to his back.

Marilynn mounted up as Glorfindel led Asfaloth from his stall. The strange Elf helped arrange Elyse in front of the Elf lord, and all the other beasts in the stables shifted and whickered with jealous energy. Marilynn couldn’t help noticing the great elk, clearly in a place of honor, pacing its enclosure. It stood taller than any horse by several hands, and Marilynn wondered how quickly it could catch up if Thranduil decided to pursue.

“Follow close,” Glorfindel called. “And keep your hood up. The guards will not expect a second rider, but they may fail to raise the alarm if our luck holds. They expect me to ride out this morning.”

Marilynn fumbled her hood up and over her face. “Got it.”

The Elf passed close to use the side tunnel they’d entered through, and Marilynn suddenly remembered her manners. To be fair, she really hadn’t needed them for the past few days.

“Thank you!”

The Elf nodded, but didn’t stop. How much trouble would she be in if she was caught?

“Stay close!” Glorfindel reminded her. Then Asfaloth sprang into a gallop, and Marilynn’s mount eagerly followed.

The stables blurred around them with a chorus of whinnies and huffs before they broke suddenly into the cool night air. Marilynn struggled to keep her hood over her face as the wind yanked hard against her grip, and she could just hear a few voices shout as she and Glorfindel blew straight past the guards.

Elven steeds ran fast. Very fast. Marilynn loved horses, and she’d always been a natural in the saddle, but as the dark forest sprang around them and Glorfindel pushed their pace, she could only hang on and hunker down to avoid the branches reaching to grab her from her seat. At least Asfaloth was easy to follow. The horse nearly glowed in the dark. As did his rider, of course. And her horse seemed to know exactly what to do without so much as a twitch of the reins.

Once the Elvenking’s halls were behind them, Marilynn found herself smiling. Twisted as Mirkwood was, it still smelled like trees, and the horse sweat veiled the less pleasant smells of the diseased forest. She felt the horse breathe, and every coiling muscle translated through her thighs to make her heart sing. Motion, breath, and wind filled her soul.

This was the kind of adventure she preferred.

.O.O.O.

They only stopped once to briefly rest the horses. Glorfindel checked Elyse’s arm, but he wouldn’t let Marilynn see, so she stayed near her pretty gelding and finger-combed its mane as Elyse groaned in her sleep.

“Where are we going?” she asked. “Rivendell?”

Glorfindel, finished with his task, lifted Elyse into the saddle. Marilynn followed her example and climbed back onto her own mount, determinedly ignoring how noodle-like her thighs had become.

“Your friend would not survive the mountain crossing. We head to Lorien and the protection of Lady Galadriel.”

He swung up with Elven grace and led them at a canter.

“If you become weary, tell me at once. We cannot stop for rest, but I will help you tie yourself into the saddle and use a lead for your mount.”

“Are you worried about King Thranduil?”

He looked over his shoulder, and Marilynn could see Elyse’s blue head slip a little under his chin.

“To a point. But I am much more concerned for your friend’s health. We must ride like the Enemy himself is at our heels. I expect the horses will be able to bear this race better than you may.”

Marilynn sat up straighter. “Whatever we need to do, I’ll do it.”

“Good.” Glorfindel smiled for her and urged Asfaloth into a gallop again.

Marilynn lasted four hours before she needed help staying on the horse.

* * *

Marilynn woke and slept again several times as they rode. She had no idea how much time had passed since they escaped Thranduil’s dungeon. Light crept through canopy in places, and in other parts, the forest stayed dark as night throughout the day. Sometimes, when she woke, she saw light. Sometimes she didn’t. She didn’t have a watch, and even if she still had her cell phone, the battery had died weeks ago, so it wouldn’t do any good.

Elven horses really did have incredible stamina. She had to bite her tongue several times to stop herself from asking if they needed a break, but this was Glorfindel, and he had Asfaloth, and so long as Asfaloth could keep going, then so could she.

When they finally did stop, she just sat in place, unable to feel her legs, as Glorfindel sprang down and carefully pulled Elyse after him. The Elf had a face like stone. Solemn and focused. All of that focus was for Elyse who – if possible – looked even worse. Marilynn decided that even if her legs fell off, she’d get down on her own. Maybe even be helpful. She wouldn’t be a burden, though.

As Glorfindel coaxed Elyse to a state of semi-consciousness with beautiful Elvish words Marilynn really wished she could pay attention to, she tugged the ties from her right leg free. She hissed. She flinched, but she freed one lifeless leg. She set to work on the other, leaning as far as possible to get the lowest knots around her calf, and the minute no third parties kept her chained to her horse, she overbalanced and tumbled to the side.

Her foot – just the one – had a vague understanding that after all these hours it had made a deep, personal connection with the stirrup, and as Marilynn angled into a free fall, it stayed exactly where it was. The horse, trained for war, only huffed and shuffled two steps to the side with his rider dangling there by her foot. Marilynn squawked, and Glorfindel appeared in a blink, fishing her foot out of the stirrup and helping her find her incredibly unsteady feet.

“Are you well?”

“Fine.” Marilynn couldn’t look him in the eye, furiously sweeping leaves and twigs out of her hair and off her clothes. “I’m fine.”

“Good.” He returned to Elyse. “I may need your assistance.”

Glorfindel cupped the back of Elyse’s head as he brought a small flask to her lips. “You must drink things. Just a mouthful.” After several minutes of wheedling, he succeeded, and as Marilynn toddled her way to Elyse’s other side, he reached for a small bottle. “Now you must swallow all of this. It will help you sleep and avoid the pain.”

Whatever dreamscape Elyse floated through, she was cognizant enough to realize if she drank what she was told the voices would shut the fuck up and let her sleep, so she obliged the helpful Elf. Marilynn saw him marginally relax as he set the empty vial aside.

“What were those?” she asked, kneeling (falling).

“A rejuvenating liquor to aid her healing and a strong sleep cordial. I am very glad she was still able to drink it. It bodes well for her recovery.” He quieted, and Marilynn swayed forward enough to hold Elyse’s hand as he rummaged in the bag provided by the Mirkwood healer.

“It will also ease the pain of what I must now do.”

The thin forest light gleamed on a narrow blade.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have been having some very, very bad mental health days, so updates are gonna be slow for a while. Tried to write a MASSIVE chapter, and decided to just post this section because it makes sense. 
> 
> Considering discontinuing the story because I feel like it's pure shit. We'll let the queen decide our fate.
> 
> Seriously, THANK YOU for the reviews and kudos. They make me feel much less shitty.
> 
> All hail Queen Shrubby.

**Author's Note:**

> This is, basically, a self-insert. It's a nostalgia trip and a promise of the future for my best friend. Please feel free to join us on this adventure as I share it with her, but remember that so long as our Queen (Shrubby) is pleased, then so am I. I'm also new to this particular platform, so please bear with me as I figure out how to make things pretty.


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